In February, Facebook parent company Meta made headlines by announcing plans to create a standalone Meta AI app to compete with ChatGPT.
Previously, Meta AI had only been available through the company's web portal and apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, and the suggestion of it becoming an app of its own fell in line with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's goal to put the AI assistant in the hands of over 1 billion people by the end of 2025.
While the news drew mild interest, Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT creators OpenAI, responded with sarcasm — and a smirk.
"Ok fine maybe we'll do a social app," he posted in reply to the news on X. A snarky, digital equivalent of a retina-snapping eye-roll. Following up on his comment, Altman continued, "lol if Facebook tries to come at us and we just Uno reverse them it would be so funny."
At the time, this was chalked up to nothing more than CEO reply-guy banter. However, recent news suggests it was anything but. Reportedly, OpenAI is working on its own social network, turning what was once an off-handed joke into potentially serious competition for both Elon Musk's xAI and Meta.
OpenAI's social media ambitions: From snark to prototype
According to The Verge, OpenAI has quietly been working on a social platform of its own, similar to Elon Musk's xAI-owned X.
While OpenAI has yet to officially announce any such plans, sources tell The Verge that an internal prototype pairing ChatGPT's image generation tools with a social feed currently exists — and that CEO Sam Altman has been "privately asking outsiders for feedback" about the project.
It's not yet known whether this tool will stand on its own or eventually be integrated into ChatGPT, or if it'll ever reach the light of day.
However, the mere suggestion that the company has a prototype in play could set alarm bells ringing for other platforms, especially now that ChatGPT has overtaken both Instagram and TikTok as the world's most downloaded non-gaming app.
The news is sure to put further strain on an already frayed relationship between CEOs Altman and Musk, with the two already engaged in a lawsuit and countersuit over OpenAI's claimed breach of contract for straying from its founding mission as a non-profit and Musk's supposed "bad-faith tactics" towards OpenAI, respectively.
Harkening back to another tongue-in-cheek post from Altman on X, OpenAI's interest in entering the social media game may have been further revealed in February.
Following Musk's apparent offer to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion, Altman replied, "No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."
Perhaps we should be taking Altman's social media posts more literally in the future.
What's next
Does OpenAI really want to become the next Facebook?
It sounds absurd. But then again, so does a talking robot assistant that takes over all forms of human thought, creativity, and planning while taking the form of a personal dietitian, psychologist, event planner, graphic designer, and guidance counselor.
Yet here we are.
Until now, OpenAI has largely played the role of infrastructure provider. It presents tools like ChatGPT and Sora for others to use. The most social element of each is the human-like responses made possible by its advanced LLMs (large language models).
A shift like the one reported changes that landscape considerably and potentially in a way that people may not respond positively to. Part of ChatGPT's appeal may be that it isn't tied into wider, more distracting social experiences like Grok and Meta AI.
Whether or not this prototype makes it to release has yet to be seen. Altman's prior tweets may have aged suspiciously well concerning today's news, but that doesn't guarantee them true prophetic status. Not yet, anyway.
