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The latest tech beef is spilling out in the open. On Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman decided to roast Elon Musk’s newly developed Grok chatbot by describing the program as focused on “cringey boomer humor.”
Musk was quick to fire back on Twitter/X, saying OpenAI’s large language model, GPT-4, is “about as funny as a screen door on a submarine.”
“GPT-4? More like GPT-Snore!” he wrote in a tweet on Friday. “Humor is clearly banned at OpenAI, just like the many other subjects it censors.”
Altman threw shade at Grok only a few days after Musk introduced the chatbot to counter ChatGPT, which Musk says censors its answers in favor of political correctness. In contrast, Grok is designed to talk about more taboo topics, like how to make cocaine, while offering answers written in a sarcastic style.
Specifically, Grok was modeled after the writing in the sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But it looks like Altman views the chatbot as a gimmick that can be easily replicated using OpenAI’s own technology.
On Thursday, Altman took to Twitter and posted a screenshot showing him using OpenAI’s GPT builder, which allows you to easily create custom chatbots with a text input. Except Altman also used the demo to troll Grok.
(Credit: Sam Altman/X)In the screenshot, Altman writes in the input: “Be a chatbot that answers questions with cringey boomer humor in a sort of awkward shock-to-get-laughs sort of way.”
In response, the GPT builder tells him: “Great, the chatbot is set up! Its name is Grok. How do you like the name, or would you prefer something else?”
Musk and his supporters were quick to hit back. Along with his own criticism, Musk also retweeted or commented on other tweets, seemingly showing that OpenAI’s ChatGPT will refuse to make jokes, even if the user requests it do so.
Musk, of course, has a history with OpenAI. He helped found it with Altman in 2015. Three years later, Musk resigned from OpenAI’s board, reportedly because he was developing his own AI project at Tesla. But he’s since accused OpenAI of neglecting its original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of all of humanity.
“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk tweeted in February.
For now, the spat between the two CEOs may seem trivial. But the entertainment factor of a chatbot can certainly be a draw. In recent months, some users have complained that ChatGPT has lost its fun factor and usefulness since OpenAI restricts it from commenting on certain topics. So Grok’s focus on becoming an unfiltered chatbot could help it stand out.
For now Grok is only available to waitlisted users with paid accounts on Twitter/X.