Elon Musk Announces xAI Will Launch 'Premium' AI Services for Select Users on November 4

Today, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, announced on his social platform X that his new artificial intelligence venture, xAI, will launch its first model on Saturday, November 4, 2023, for a select group of users.

Founded in Nevada in March and officially unveiled in July, xAI aims to “understand the true nature of the universe.” While details about its debut product remain scarce, Musk touted it as potentially “the best that currently exists” in critical areas.

This announcement aligns with Musk's typical style of generating buzz before a launch, and the timing is strategic—coming just days before OpenAI, the leading consumer AI company, holds its first DevDay on November 6. OpenAI Co-Founder and CEO Sam Altman has indicated that DevDay will feature exciting new product announcements.

Notably, Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 but later parted ways amid disagreements over the company’s direction. His departure allowed OpenAI to shift from a non-profit to a capped-profit organization, securing substantial investments from Microsoft and launching ground-breaking AI models like GPT and DALL-E. This evolution has solidified OpenAI’s status as a leader in generative AI, benefiting from widespread integration into Microsoft products like Edge and Microsoft 365.

Musk has been vocal in his criticism of OpenAI's transition to a profit-driven model controlled by Microsoft, even severing OpenAI's access to X's data for training purposes in December 2022.

Now, Musk believes he is poised to bring forth safe and ethical AI through xAI. The upcoming launch of its first AI model just ahead of OpenAI's conference seems designed to capture attention during the tech event.

“I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk stated in an April interview with Fox News. He emphasized that an AI focused on universal understanding is less likely to pose existential threats to humanity. This focus is central to xAI’s mission, which has attracted experts from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto.

Musk aims to contribute positively to the AI landscape, hoping to deliver a competitive alternative to offerings from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft. Reports suggest that xAI's model is being trained on data from X and Oracle Cloud. Additionally, Musk has expressed optimism that Artificial General Intelligence, which could emulate human-like learning and thinking, could be realized by around 2029.