Amid the ongoing battle between OpenAI's Sam Altman and rival Elon Musk, Altman praised Musk as an entrepreneur but called him a "bully" for picking fights with tech leaders like Amazon's Bezos and Meta's Zuckerberg. Altman also criticized Musk's xAI for directly competing with OpenAI's ChatGPT through its chatbot GrokAI, which has recently been made available to more users.
As tensions mount, both leaders are seeking new ways to dominate the fast-growing field of artificial intelligence.
In an episode of the BariWeiss podcast, Altman discussed his feud with Musk. Earlier this year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that OpenAI violated the terms of its service contract by trying to become a for-profit company rather than a nonprofit organization. Recently, Musk filed a new motion with the California District Court to prevent OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company.
When talking about Musk, Altman said: "He is also obviously a bully, and he is obviously also a person who likes to fight. Now, it's me. Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg and many other people are like this. I think, fundamentally, this is to make OpenAI better. Elon cares about how to do it very well." In addition, Altman also revealed that Musk once advocated turning OpenAI into a for-profit organization and even proposed merging it with Tesla.
Despite these challenges, OpenAI secured $6.6 billion in funding in October, raising its valuation to $157 billion. Now, Ultraman is focused on innovation. Just before Christmas, he asked his fellow X fans for their opinions on what OpenAI should build or fix in the coming year.
The OpenAI CEO’s post on
Family accounts: One user suggested creating family-friendly accounts with parental controls so kids can safely explore AI while parents set boundaries. Altman praised the idea and called it a good idea.
Better voice chat: Altman has been suggested to improve ChatGPT’s voice functionality, which has been criticized in the past for interrupting users during conversations. Altman seems to have given the nod to improving this feature, as he claims it's a "good point."
Enhance Sora: Multiple users urged Altman to improve OpenAI’s text-to-video generation AI tool Sora. After its official release on December 9, users have been loving it but wish it offered more features and improved the quality of video production. "Coming soon," Altman said, and it appears improvements to Sora are on the way.
With these recommendations in place, OpenAI appears poised to improve the user experience in the coming year by introducing new features and fixing existing ones.