Facebook (NASDAQ:META) parent Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is planning an imminent launch of its own ChatGPT killer, according to a Financial Times report published on Thursday.
Though Meta’s large-language model will be open source, the social media conglomerate is said to be working on a monetisation strategy for enterprise-grade usage.
This contrasts with OpenAI’s strategy, with the ChatGPT developer keeping its code and intellectual property under lock and key.
“The goal is to diminish the current dominance of OpenAI,” one upper-level source at Meta told the FT.
Meanwhile, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg’s social media nemesis Elon Musk is also plotting to usurp OpenAI’s first-mover advantage with large-language model xAI.
xAI’s lofty goal is to “understand the true nature of the universe”.
The company will be led by Musk and a crew of researchers poached from Google DeepMind, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and OpenAI.
Musk may find himself working with a few former colleagues; he co-founded OpenAI in 2015 after all.
It’s also a sharp 180 twist from the stance only a few months earlier, when he co-signed a letter calling for a six-month moratorium on all AI research for fears of a Skynet moment.
Both Meta and Musk’s X Corp conglomerate have found themselves on the backfoot ever since Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched the revolutionary ChatGPT application in November 2022.
Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was quick to release its own ChatGPT rival Bard, sparking an AI arms race among Big Tech competitors.
There’s no telling if Meta or X Corp (or any other entity) will be able to compete with OpenAI’s substantial first-mover advantage, but it definitely marks yet another battle line in the increasingly acrimonious relationship between Zuck and Musk.
Meta’s unbelievably successful launch of Twitter killer Threads lit the flame of war between the two.
AI could very well be one of the others’ Waterloo Moment.