Elon Musk Is About to Release His First AI

We can't wait to take Musk's "maximum truth-seeking AI" for a spin.

Hype Beast

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is set to release its first AI model to a select group of users as soon as Saturday, the mercurial CEO said in a tweet today.

And since Musk is no stranger to overpromising, he's claiming his that startup's AI is "the best that currently exists."

But whether that'll actually turn out to be true remains to be seen — and given his spotty track record on timelines and tech promises, he has a lot to prove.

Killing Woke

Musk has long been invested in the space, having cofounded OpenAI eight years ago. In 2015, he quit the company over disagreements with the group's direction, tweeting back in 2019 that "it was just better to part ways on good terms."

Any chance of maintaining those good terms went out the window when  Musk went on a tirade earlier this year, arguing that companies like OpenAI are actively censoring their models and giving in to the "woke" demands of the left — while also risking an evil algorithm running amok.

In response, Musk took matters into his own hands. In April, the entrepreneur announced he was building a "maximum truth-seeking AI"  in an interview with far-right commentator Tucker Carlson on Fox News, designed to "understand the true nature of the universe," per the company's official website. Its name?  Apparently "TruthGPT."

Free-est Speech

What any of this actually means or whether it'll make his startup's AI any more successful than OpenAI's already uber-popular chatbot is still unclear at best.

But given his disastrous leadership at Twitter, now known as X, where he's doubled down on his own flawed interpretation of "free speech," there's a good chance we won't see the kinds of guardrails OpenAI has been implementing to keep its AI models from pumping out problematic material.

There's still a lot we don't know about xAI's upcoming AI model, oviously. But claiming it'll be the "best" AI in the world is one heck of a claim that not only sets the bar as high as it goes, but also smacks of Musk's archetypal hubris.

More on Musk's AI: Elon Musk Says He's Building a "Maximum Truth-Seeking AI"