Is Twitter working on its own chatbot?
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in Oct., he has brought about a significant amount of change to the company, for better or for worse. New reports show that the changes may go way beyond a blue checkmark and could involve generative AI.
Musk has recently purchased 10,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) for Twitter, according to Business Insider sources.
GPUs are used for generative AI projects because of their ability to process lots of data at the same time. This ability is crucial for machine learning models including generative AI, as they are trained on massive amounts of data. Therefore, the purchase directly points to a generative AI project on the horizon.
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Business Insider's sources also shared that Musk's AI project involves a large language model (LLM), again signaling to a generative AI model of some form.
Examples of popular LLMs include OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 which powers ChatGPT and Bing Chat, or Google's LaMDA which powers Bard.
To further confirm the possibility of an AI project in the works, Musk hired newly hired AI talent -- engineers Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss -- in early March.
Musk isn't new to the space, as he is one of the co-founders of OpenAI, the AI research company behind ChatGPT, when it was founded, before pulling out in 2018.
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The project could perhaps relate to his vision of converting Twitter to "X, an everything app," an app that could serve as a one-stop shop for all of people's needs. He has already taken the first steps in making that happen by changing Twitter's company name to X Corp.
The irony of the situation is that Musk recently signed a petition to halt further AI developments and continues to vocalize his concerns about the dangers of AI. If he is working on a project of his own, does that mean he is trying to halt everyone's advancements so he can catch up?