San Francisco:

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has named political veteran Chris Lehane as its vice president of global policy, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Lehane, who is a member of the executive team at OpenAI, was a former policy chief for Airbnb and a member of the Clinton White House.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The appointment comes as Apple and chip giant Nvidia are reportedly in talks to invest in OpenAI as part of a new fundraising round that could value the Microsoft-backed startup above $100 billion.

Earlier in the day, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is weighing changes to its corporate structure to become more investor-friendly.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Nvidia Corp., the world’s biggest chipmaker, has discussed joining a funding round for OpenAI that would value the artificial intelligence startup at more than $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. also have been in talks about participating in the financing, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The round would be led by Thrive Capital, which is investing about $1 billion, Bloomberg reported earlier this week. Nvidia has discussed investing about $100 million, two of the people said.

If the discussions move forward, it would mean the three most valuable tech companies are all backing OpenAI, maker of the groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot. Microsoft was already OpenAI’s biggest funder, having invested roughly $13 billion.

Representatives for Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI and Thrive all declined to comment.

Big Tech’s influence over artificial intelligence has been drawing mounting scrutiny, with regulators in both the EU and US expressing concerns about Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips and Microsoft’s close relationship with OpenAI. Microsoft has tightly integrated OpenAI’s services into its Windows and Copilot AI platforms – a bet that the capabilities will help drive growth.

Apple has existing ties with OpenAI as well. The iPhone maker is adding ChatGPT to its new suite of AI features, called Apple Intelligence. The company also was slated to take a board observer seat at OpenAI – alongside Microsoft – but those plans were dropped in July.

Nvidia, meanwhile, supplies the critical infrastructure needed to develop and run AI tools like ChatGPT. It’s the biggest maker of so-called AI accelerators, sales of which have soared over the past two years.

In Nvidia’s latest quarterly report, released on Wednesday, revenue more than doubled to $30 billion. It predicted even bigger sales in the current quarter, topping the average analysts estimates, though investors have grown so accustomed to blowout results that the shares still declined.

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told employees in a memo Wednesday that the company was seeking fresh capital, without giving details, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has been in discussions to raise funding at a valuation at or above $100 billion since at least December, Bloomberg has reported.

The financing would bolster one of the world’s most valuable venture-backed startups. The runaway success of ChatGPT also has kicked off an arms race among tech companies, which are integrating AI technology across their products and funding other promising startups.

In her memo to employees, Friar said that OpenAI would use the financing to acquire more computing power and fund other operating expenses, the people said.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the discussions with Apple.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

OpenAI, the startup behind the popular ChatGPT, is reportedly in discussions to raise billions of dollars in a new funding round that could see it valued at above $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The funding round is expected to be led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital, which is poised to invest approximately $1 billion, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Tech giant and OpenAI backer Microsoft is also expected to put in money, it added.

OpenAI, Microsoft and Thrive Capital did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

ChatGPT, a chatbot that can generate human-like responses based on user prompts, has driven AI’s popularity and fueled a meteoric rise in the valuation of the San Francisco-based firm.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

OpenAI said on Friday it had taken down accounts of an Iranian group for using its ChatGPT chatbot to generate content meant for influencing the U.S. presidential election and other issues.

The operation, identified as Storm-2035, used ChatGPT to generate content focused on topics such as commentary on the candidates on both sides in the U.S. elections, the conflict in Gaza and Israel’s presence at the Olympic Games and then shared it via social media accounts and websites.

Investigation by the Microsoft-backed AI company showed that ChatGPT was used for generating long-form articles and shorter social media comments.

OpenAI said the operation did not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement.

Majority of the identified social media posts received few or no likes, shares or comments and the company did not see indications of web articles being shared across social media.

The accounts have been banned from using OpenAI’s services and the company continues to monitor activities for any further attempts to violate policies, it said.

Earlier in August, a Microsoft threat-intelligence report said Iranian network Storm-2035, comprising four websites masquerading as news outlets, is actively engaging U.S. voter groups on opposing ends of the political spectrum.

The engagement was being built with “polarizing messaging on issues such as the U.S. presidential candidates, LGBTQ rights, and the Israel-Hamas conflict,” the report stated.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican rival Donald Trump are locked in a tight race, ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The AI firm said in May it had disrupted five covert influence operations that sought to use its models for “deceptive activity” across the internet.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

OpenAI on Thursday said it was putting its artificial intelligence engine to work in a challenge to Google’s market-dominating search engine.

The startup behind ChatGPT announced that it is testing a “SearchGPT” prototype that is “designed to combine the strength of our AI models with information from the web” to answer online queries quickly and to provide relevant sources.

SearchGPT is being made available to a small group of users and publishers to get feedback, OpenAI said in a blog post.

Search features refined in the prototype will be woven into ChatGPT in the future, according to the San Francisco-based company.

Users will be able to interact with SearchGPT through conversational queries, and can ask follow-up questions as they might if speaking to a person, OpenAI said.

Google recently added AI-generated query result summaries — referred to as “Overviews” — to its search engine, causing worries among some that the move would result in fewer opportunities to serve up money-making ads.

This new feature offers written text at the top of results for Google searches, ahead of the traditional links to sites, which summarizes information that the engine believes answers the user’s search query.

OpenAI’s description of SearchGPT sounded similar to Google’s Overviews.

Since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, companies in the sector have been engaged in a frantic race to deploy generative AI programs for producing text, images and other content through prompts in everyday language.

“We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack,” Google chief Sundar Pichai said this week during an earnings call for parent company Alphabet, which he also heads.

OpenAI said it was working with some publishers to refine SearchGPT, which is being kept separate from the training of its generative AI foundation models.

“AI search is going to become one of the key ways that people navigate the internet, and it’s crucial, in these early days, that the technology is built in a way that values, respects, and protects journalism and publishers,” The Atlantic chief executive Nicholas Thompson said in the OpenAI blog post.

“We look forward to partnering with OpenAI in the process.”

OpenAI has invited users to sign up on a waitlist to try SearchGPT.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

OpenAI whistleblowers have filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, calling for an investigation over the artificial intelligence company’s allegedly restrictive non-disclosure agreements, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing a copy of the letter sent to the SEC.

The whistleblowers alleged that OpenAI issued overly restrictive employment, severance, and nondisclosure agreements to its employees, which could have led to penalties against workers who raised concerns about OpenAI to federal authorities, according to the newspaper.

The AI company made employees sign agreements that required them to waive their federal rights to whistleblower compensation, according to the letter seen by the Washington Post.

The agreements also required that employees get prior consent from the company if they wanted to disclose information to federal regulators, the newspaper said, adding that OpenAI did not create exemptions in the employee nondisparagement clauses for disclosing securities violations to the SEC.

An SEC spokesperson said in an emailed statement that it does not comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible whistleblower submission.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for a comment on the Washington Post report.

OpenAI’s chatbots with generative AI capabilities, such as engaging in human-like conversations and creating images based on text prompts, have stirred safety concerns as AI models become powerful.

OpenAI in May formed a Safety and Security Committee that will be led by board members, including CEO Sam Altman, as it begins training its next artificial intelligence model.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, has said it acted within 24 hours to disrupt “deceptive” use of artificial intelligence (AI) in a covert operation that sought to influence the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

This influence campaign, called “Zero Zeno”, was run by STOIC, a political campaign management firm in Israel.

The threat actors attempted to leverage OpenAI’s powerful language models for tasks like generating comments, articles, social media profiles that criticised the ruling BJP and praised the Congress, the company led by CEO Sam Altman said.

“In May, the network began generating comments that focused on India, criticised the ruling BJP party and praised the opposition Congress party. We disrupted some activity focused on the Indian elections less than 24 hours after it began,” OpenAI said.

OpenAI said it banned a cluster of accounts operated from Israel that were being used to generate and edit content for an influence operation that spanned X, Facebook, Instagram, websites, and YouTube.

“This operation targeted audiences in Canada, the United States and Israel with content in English and Hebrew. In early May, it began targeting audiences in India with English-language content,” the company said.

Responding to the report, the BJP called it a “dangerous threat” to the democracy.

“It is absolutely clear and obvious that @BJP4India was and is the target of influence operations, misinformation and foreign interference, being done by and/or on behalf of some Indian political parties,” said Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

“This is very dangerous threat to our democracy. It is clear vested interests in India and outside are clearly driving this and needs to be deeply scrutinized/investigated and exposed. My view at this point is that these platforms could have released this much earlier, and not so late when elections are ending,” he added.

It is absolutely clear and obvious that @BJP4India was and is the target of influence operations, misinformation and foreign interference, being done by and/or on behalf of some Indian political parties.

This is very dangerous threat to our democracy. It is clear vested… https://t.co/e78pbEuHwe

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Modiyude Kutumbam) (@Rajeev_GoI) May 31, 2024

OpenAI said it has disrupted five covert operations in the last three months that sought to use our models in support of deceptive activity across the internet. “Our investigations into suspected covert influence operations (IO) are part of a broader strategy to meet our goal of safe AI deployment.”

San Francisco:

An OpenAI team devoted to mitigating the long-term dangers of super-smart computers was leaderless on Friday after two high-profile figures left the company.

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and “superalignment” team co-leader Jan Leike announced their departures from the ChatGPT-maker last week, and US media reported that remaining members of the group have either left or been reassigned to other parts of the San Francisco-based company.

The apparent dismantling of an OpenAI team focused on keeping sophisticated artificial intelligence under control comes as such technology comes under increased scrutiny from regulators and fears mount regarding its dangers.

“OpenAI must become a safety-first AGI (artificial general intelligence) company,” Leike wrote Friday in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Leike called on all OpenAI employees to “act with the gravitas” warranted by what they are building.

It’s been such a wild journey over the past ~3 years. My team launched the first ever RLHF LLM with InstructGPT, published the first scalable oversight on LLMs, pioneered automated interpretability and weak-to-strong generalization. More exciting stuff is coming out soon.

— Jan Leike (@janleike) May 17, 2024

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman responded to Leike’s post with one of his own, thanking him for his work at the company and saying he was sad to see Leike leave.

“He’s right we have a lot more to do,” Altman said. “We are committed to doing it.”

Altman promised more on the topic in the coming days.

Sutskever said on X that he was leaving after almost a decade at OpenAI, whose “trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous.”

“I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial,” he added, referring to computer technology that seeks to perform as well as — or better than — human cognition.

Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, sat on the board that voted to remove fellow chief executive Altman in November last year.

The ousting threw the San Francisco-based startup into a tumult, with the OpenAI board hiring Altman back a few days later after staff and investors rebelled.

OpenAI last week released a higher-performing and even more human-like version of the artificial intelligence technology that underpins ChatGPT, making it free to all users.

“It feels like AI from the movies,” Altman said in a blog post.

Altman has previously pointed to the Scarlett Johansson character in the movie “Her,” where she voices an AI-based virtual assistant dating a man, as an inspiration for where he would like AI interactions to go.

The day will come when “digital brains will become as good and even better than our own,” Sutskever said during a talk at a TED AI summit in San Francisco late last year.

“AGI will have a dramatic impact on every area of life.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Seattle:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defended his company’s AI technology as safe for widespread use, as concerns mount over potential risks and lack of proper safeguards for ChatGPT-style AI systems.

Altman’s remarks came at a Microsoft event in Seattle, where he spoke to developers just as a new controversy erupted over an OpenAI AI voice that closely resembled that of the actress Scarlett Johansson.

The CEO, who rose to global prominence after OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, is also grappling with questions about the safety of the company’s AI following the departure of the team responsible for mitigating long-term AI risks.

“My biggest piece of advice is this is a special time and take advantage of it,” Altman told the audience of developers seeking to build new products using OpenAI’s technology.

“This is not the time to delay what you’re planning to do or wait for the next thing,” he added.

OpenAI is a close partner of Microsoft and provides the foundational technology, primarily the GPT-4 large language model, for building AI tools.

Microsoft has jumped on the AI bandwagon, pushing out new products and urging users to embrace generative AI’s capabilities.

“We kind of take for granted” that GPT-4, while “far from perfect…is generally considered robust enough and safe enough for a wide variety of uses,” Altman said.

Altman insisted that OpenAI had put in “a huge amount of work” to ensure the safety of its models.

“When you take a medicine, you want to know what’s going to be safe, and with our model, you want to know it’s going to be robust to behave the way you want it to,” he added.

However, questions about OpenAI’s commitment to safety resurfaced last week when the company dissolved its “superalignment” group, a team dedicated to mitigating the long-term dangers of AI.

In announcing his departure, team co-leader Jan Leike criticized OpenAI for prioritizing “shiny new products” over safety in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).

“Over the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind,” Leike said.

“These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren’t on a trajectory to get there.”

This controversy was swiftly followed by a public statement from Johansson, who expressed outrage over a voice used by OpenAI’s ChatGPT that sounded similar to her voice in the 2013 film “Her.”

The voice in question, called “Sky,” was featured last week in the release of OpenAI’s more human-like GPT-4o model.

In a short statement on Tuesday, Altman apologized to Johansson but insisted the voice was not based on hers.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson said that she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” after Sam Altman’s OpenAI launched a chatbot with an “eerily similar” voice to hers, as per a report in BBC. The actress said that she had previously declined the company’s request for her voice to be used in their new ChatGPT 4.0 chatbot, which reads the material to users aloud.

Since the AI chatbot named Sky debuted last week, many users were quick to draw parallels between the chatbot’s tone and Scarlett Johansson’s in the 2013 movie ‘Her’.

OpenAI stated on X (formerly Twitter) that the AI voice will be put on hold while the company responds to “questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT.” The Sky voice was “not an imitation” of Ms Johansson’s, the company wrote in a blog post. They added that it was recorded by a separate professional actor, whose name they would not disclose to protect her privacy.

However, the ‘Marriage Story’ actor accused OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of copying her voice. She said in a statement, “Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.”

Ms Johansson added that she declined the offer but was taken aback when she heard the demo. “When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word “her” – a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.”

Ms Johansson stated that the circumstances “forced her to hire legal counsel,” and as a result, her attorney sent two letters to Mr Altman and OpenAI requesting an explanation of the chatbot’s voice’s creation process. She added that OpenAI then “reluctantly agreed” to remove the voice from the platform.

“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected,” she said in her statement.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman said in a statement emailed to Reuters that Sky’s voice was not an imitation of Johansson, but belonged to a different professional actress. He said, “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms Johansson. Out of respect for Ms Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”