OpenAI is considering building a social network to compete with Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Instagram, a source familiar with the plans confirmed to CNBC.
The project is still in its early stages, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. It’s based on the popularity of OpenAI’s newest image-generation feature, which has led to an overloading of the company’s servers.
The Verge was first to report on the project. OpenAI declined to comment.
In March, OpenAI debuted its latest image-generation tool, the inspiration for the potential social media project, as a way to produce everything from diagrams, infographics and logos to business cards and stock photos. The feature can also use an image as a starting point for art, such as a custom painting of a pet or editing a professional headshot.
Images of anime-style renderings of users’ uploaded photos have been going viral on X and other social media apps, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman changed his X profile photo to an image generated by the new feature.
While it is “super fun seeing people love images” in ChatGPT, “our GPUs are melting,” Altman posted on X late last month, referring to graphics processing units, which power AI training and workloads. He added that that the company would temporarily limit the feature’s usage as it works to make it more efficient.
OpenAI faces hefty competition in the fast-growing generative AI market, including from Musk’s xAI, which said last month that it had acquired X, also controlled by Musk. Altman and Musk are simultaneously involved in a heated legal battle, largely centering around OpenAI’s effort to transform into a for-profit entity. Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI, which was launched in 2015 as a non-profit research lab.
A federal district court last month blocked Musk’s attempt to stop OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit company. In February, a Musk-led group offered to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion, a bid that was swiftly rejected.
Last month, OpenAI closed what amounts to the largest private tech funding round on record, raising $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation.
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