Tesla CEO Elon Musk reminded attendees at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (CLIFC) today that he gave the name to the currently hot AI startup OpenAI. CLIFC, formerly known as the "Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival", is the most influential and prestigious annual event in the global advertising creative communication and marketing industry.
Every June, senior executives of communication groups, advertisers, media agencies, production companies, public relations companies, creative teams and representatives of industry organizations from all over the world gather in the small town of Cannes to exchange ideas, collide with creativity and inspire inspiration.
Musk’s participation in this event is largely believed to be to help his social platform X regain advertisers. After Musk acquired X, a large number of advertisers fled the X platform, thus affecting the company's revenue. The latest data shows that in the first six months of 2023, X's revenue was US$1.48 billion, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 40%.
Today, Musk said in an interview with WPP CEO Mark Read during the conference that he originally created OpenAI, in part, to fight against Google. "This is very much a unipolar world, with Google completely dominating AI," he said.
Musk also said that OpenAI was founded with many good visions in mind. Among them, the "Open" in the name of OpenAI represents "open source". He also added: "I came up with the name OpenAI." Musk went on to say: "Now, it is a 'closed source' AI company pursuing maximum profits, which is different from what was expected. I don't know how it got to where it is today."
OpenAI was founded in December 2015, when Musk served as co-chairman and pledged $1 billion in funding to OpenAI. When founded, OpenAI was a non-profit organization dedicated to developing AI in ways most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.
But in 2019, OpenAI shed that status and established a profitable subsidiary, allowing it to raise outside funding, including from Microsoft. Recently, OpenAI is even considering turning the company into a for-profit company, paving the way for a potential IPO.