OpenAI Reportedly Taking On X and Meta With Social Network Plans

OpenAI is reportedly developing a social media platform along the lines of X.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (April 15) by the Verge, citing sources who said the project involves an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation with a social feed.

According to that report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been privately seeking feedback about the project from outsiders. The efforts are still in their early stages, the report said, and it’s not clear whether OpenAI would release its social platform as its own application to make it a part of ChatGPT.

The report notes that such a move could increase tensions between OpenAI and other social networks. For example, Altman has a long-running feud with X’s Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI but left in 2018.

Musk last year sued Altman and OpenAI, claiming they had abandoned the company’s initial goal of creating artificial intelligence (AI) for the benefit of humanity rather than profit.

OpenAI counter-sued Musk recently, accusing him of harassment and attempting to halt its shift to a for-profit model, a move that could determine the company’s access to historic levels of funding. The two sides are set to begin a jury trial next year.

Musk has also put together a group of investors who made a $97.4 billion offer for the control of OpenAI, which Altman and the company quickly rejected.

Beyond Altman’s relationship with Musk, an OpenAI social network could also bring that company head-to-head with Meta as it works on its standalone MetaAI service.

Responding to reports of this plan in February, Altman wrote on X: “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.”

In other OpenAI news, company finance chief Sarah Friar said this week that the startup is creating an AI agent that can do the work of software engineers, not just enhance their skills.

“This is not just augmenting the current software engineers in your workforce, which is kind of what we can do today through Copilot, but instead, it’s literally an agentic software engineer that can build an app for you,” Friar said at the Disruptive Technology Symposium in London, hosted by Goldman Sachs.

“Not only does it build it, it does all the things that software engineers hate to do” such as quality assurance tests, bug testing and bashing, as well as the accompanying documentation, she said. “So suddenly, you can force multiply your software engineering workforce.”

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