A ChatGPT Social Feed Makes Fun and Practical Sense
Kylie Robison
There's a certain irony that just as Meta finds themselves in federal court attempting to stop the government from breaking up the company synonymous with social networking, new social networks keep popping up. The latest? A would-be social product from OpenAI, according to Kylie Robison and Alex Heath:
OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
While the project is still in early stages, we’re told there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that has a social feed. CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, our sources say. It’s unclear if OpenAI’s plan is to release the social network as a separate app or integrate it into ChatGPT, which became the most downloaded app globally last month. An OpenAI spokesperson didn’t respond in time for publication.
To be honest, this sounds less like a Xitter competitor, and more like the public feeds of Midjourney and other AI image creation tools. These feeds are interesting and smart because they provide both inspiration for users of the services and also overcome the "blank prompt" problem – i.e. if you can literally create anything in the world, what should you enter in the prompt box?
While this is interesting and useful for images, it's arguably just as important for any AI query as these tools go more mainstream. Anecdotally, a lot of people I know – non-tech people – who have tried ChatGPT, aren't even sure what to ask. So a feed showcasing such things would potentially go a long way in user on-boarding, if nothing else.
And back to that pesky antitrust trial, something Meta this way comes, it seems:
Entering the social media market also puts OpenAI on more of a collision course with Meta, which we’re told is planning to add a social feed to its coming standalone app for its AI assistant. When reports of Meta building a rival to the ChatGPT app first surfaced a couple of months ago, Altman shot back on X again by saying, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.”
Meta clearly needs a stand-alone app for their AI, and doing one with a social feed baked in makes all the sense in the world for the, again, social networking company. Also, from the competition perspective:
One idea behind the OpenAI social prototype is to have AI help people share better content. “The Grok integration with X has made everyone jealous,” says someone working at another big AI lab. “Especially how people create viral tweets by getting it to say something stupid.”
Without question, the main compelling point of Grok – perhaps the only compelling point right now – is the Xitter integration. That's a big part of why the xAI acquisition makes sense. And while OpenAI may not need a direct answer, having at least a tangential one in the form of a social feed, can't hurt.
Further, I'm still sort of shocked that none of the other social networks have made it super easy to create AI content yet. Sure, there's the "slop" concern. But you could start with one-click AI image generation and go from there. Instead, you have to go through a few clicks right now, even on Xitter.
Anyway, if nothing else, I appreciate OpenAI's willingness to try to go back on offense as the competition comes for them. "Oh, the social networks are going to do AI? That's cute. We'll do a social network." That kind of thing.
One more thing: Amir Efrati backs up The Verge's scoop at The Information, also pointing to the notion that this may reside as a feed within ChatGPT and uncovering the fun nugget, that OpenAI is calling such posts "yeets".