December 23, 2024

OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OGR Officine Grandi Riparazioni 2024 Italian Tech Week in Turin, Italy, on September 25, 2024.

Stefano Guidi | Getty Images News | Getty Images

“Open Artificial Intelligence”12 Days of Ship Carnival,” the event concluded on Friday, bringing a lighter touch to the end of the year. The marketing blitz was a way for the high-profile and controversial artificial intelligence startup to show off the plethora of new features and tools it can release. way and have some fun at the same time.

But when the calendar turns over, the company faces some serious challenges. Most notably, co-founder Elon Musk now runs rival startup xAI and is engaged in a bitter legal battle with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman struggle, which could have a significant impact on the company’s future.

Considering that the world’s richest man will exert huge influence in the incoming Trump administration, Musk’s threat to OpenAI becomes even more significant.

Musk has filed multiple lawsuits in recent months Microsoft– Supported OpenAI and asked the court to prevent the company from converting from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. In X’s post, he descriptive The effort was dismissed as a “complete scam” claim “OpenAI is evil.” At the New York Times DealBook Summit earlier this month, Altman said he viewed xAI as a “fierce competitor.”

Much of the pressure on OpenAI has to do with its $157 billion valuation, achieved in the two years since the company launched its viral chatbot ChatGPT and kicked off the generative artificial intelligence boom. OpenAI completed its latest round of financing of US$6.6 billion in October and is preparing to actively compete with xAI and Microsoft. Google, Amazon In the same market as Anthropic Expected to exceed US$1 trillion Income over ten years.

In addition to the drama surrounding OpenAI and Altman, the Shipmas craze has also become a way for the company to shift focus to its technology and generate buzz for its products.

The most important announcement of the 12 days was the public release on December 9 of OpenAI’s much-hyped video generation tool Sora.

OpenAI releases AI video generation tool Sora

Sora, which OpenAI first released in February, is relatively simple to use: The user inputs the scene they want, and the engine returns a high-definition video clip. Sora can also create clips inspired by still images and extend existing footage or fill in missing footage. While there are other AI video tools available, Sora is by far the most anticipated due to the power of OpenAI’s large language model.

On Wednesday, OpenAI gave users a new way to talk to its viral chatbot: 1-800-CHATGPT. U.S. users can call the number (1-800-242-8478) for free for 15 minutes each month, OpenAI said, and WhatsApp users around the world can use the same number to send messages to the chatbot.

Other announcements include the full release of OpenAI’s new o1 AI model focused on inference, a demonstration of video and screen sharing options in ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode, the ability to organize work into “projects” in ChatGPT, wider rollout ChatGPT search and new developer tools. The company also uses marketing to talk about its integration with Apple on iPhone, iPad and macOS.

OpenAI ended its 12-day launch event on Friday, announcing the launch of its latest cutting-edge models, the o3 and o3 mini. Previous live streamingAltman said the company won’t launch the models publicly on Friday but will make them available for public safety testing immediately.

The company launched o1 in September and jumped directly to o3, and Altman said he would continue “OpenAI’s great tradition of being really bad at naming things.”

The event was celebrated in some corners for the company’s ability to make a strong end-of-year push, but was criticized by others for being clearly more hype than substance. Either way, OpenAI knows the competition is heating up quickly.

Amazon-backed Anthropic, one of its main rivals, was founded by early OpenAI researchers and has been attracting top talent. In May, OpenAI security chief Jan Leike left OpenAI to join Anthropic, and in August, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman announced that he would leave to join a rival startup. They were part of a wave of departures in September, when three top leaders, notably technology chief Mira Murati, announced their departures on the same day.

Microsoft is nervous

A recent report from Anthropic investor Menlo Ventures found that OpenAI This year, Anthropic’s market share in enterprise artificial intelligence fell from 50% to 34%, while Anthropic’s market share doubled from 12% to 24%. The results come from a survey of 600 enterprise IT decision-makers at companies with 50 or more employees, the report said.

One key area where the two companies appear poised to go head-to-head is defense, as the AI ​​company reversed a previous ban on military use of its products and forged partnerships with major industry players and the U.S. Department of Defense.

A day before OpenAI’s Shipmas event, the company announced a partnership with Anduril to allow defense technology providers to deploy advanced artificial intelligence systems for “national security missions.” Last month, Anthropic and the defense software supplier Palantir Announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to “provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies with access” to Anthropic artificial intelligence systems.

The main battle, though, remains the user’s battle. Altman publicly stated earlier this month that OpenAI currently has 300 million weekly active users. Over the next year, the company reportedly Target 1 billion.

That level of growth will likely require an expensive marketing push and rapid feature releases as the company progresses on its two-year timeline to transform from a nonprofit to a fully for-profit company. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced it had hired its first chief marketing officer, poaching Kate Rouch from cryptocurrency company Coinbase.

In addition, the relationship with Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor and main cloud provider, has become increasingly complicated. While the two companies continue to tout the value of their close partnership, there are growing signs of tension.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (right) speaks as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on at the OpenAI DevDay event in San Francisco on November 6, 2023.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

After Altman was abruptly but briefly ousted from OpenAI late last year, reports emerged that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had not been briefed beforehand. After Altman was quickly reinstated, OpenAI gave Microsoft a non-voting board seat. Microsoft gave up the position in July.

In March, Nadella hired Mustafa Suleyman, who co-founded the artificial intelligence research company DeepMind and sold it to Google in 2014. Co-founded and led the startup Inflection AI, which was acquired by Microsoft.

In its annual report released in July, Microsoft listed OpenAI as a competitor, adding the company to a list of companies that for years have included Amazon, Apple, Google and Yuan. In October, OpenAI launched a search feature in ChatGPT, allowing it to better compete with search engines like Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

But the thorniest question heading into the new year may involve Musk, who has been a frequent visitor to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since the election.

Trump has said in the past that he would rescind President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order on artificial intelligence, which introduced new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance and research on the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market.

Musk will lead the Trump administration’s Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), which is expected to serve as an advisory office alongside former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. His new role could help Musk. Tesla and SpaceX and owns social media company X, influencing federal agency budgets, staffing and regulations in ways that benefit his company.

“Starting to feel like @DOGE has real potential,” Musk release X day last month.

OpenAI did not comment for this story, and Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

watch: OpenAI launches “Shimmas”

OpenAI kicks off 'Shipmas' with 12 days of releases and demos

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