ChatGPT owner OpenAI has acquired New York-based digital products company, Global Illumination, for an undisclosed sum.
In a statement, Open AI said it has “acquired the team at Global Illumination to work on our core products including ChatGPT.”
“We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI. Global Illumination is a company that has been leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure, and digital experiences…”
The digital products firm was founded by Thomas Dimson, a former principal engineer and director at Instagram from 2013-2020, Taylor Gordon, formerly a research engineer at Facebook AI and Joey Flymm, a former product design director at Instagram.
Alongside the founders, Global Illumination says it is made up of the most senior individual contributors from Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, Riot Games and more.
The acquisition marks a clear step in strategic direction from the artificial intelligence firm, which became globally renowned for its self-learning generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Open AI said the Global Illumination team previously designed and built products early on at Instagram and Facebook and have also made significant contributions at YouTube, Google, Pixar, Riot Games, and other notable companies.
Could the deal mean that OpenAI has plans for new AI-driven social media tools to be rolled out in the future, to rival the likes of Instagram and Facebook? Time will tell.
What is OpenAI?
OpenAI is a private research laboratory which says it aims to develop and direct artificial intelligence (AI) in ‘ways that benefit humanity as a whole.’ It was founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others in 2015.
In January 2023, ChatGPT made history by becoming the fastest-growing application, hitting 100m active users in less than 3 months.
This record-breaking achievement has since been beaten by Threads, Meta’s answer to X (formerly Twitter), which launched in July and reached 100m users in the five first days!
For comparison, TikTok took 9 months to reach 100m users and Instagram took 2.5 years.
But ChatGPT has faced much criticism since its launch. It has been described as a “threat to the electoral process” by Fabio Motoki, a PhD lecturer at Norwich Business School – a part of the University of East Anglia,who spoke to the Matt Haycox Daily about his findings.
But in contrast, unsurprisingly (!) ChatGPT describes itself as “mind blowing” and a “game-changer for businesses of all sizes and industries,” whilst talking exclusively to Matt Haycox.
But fears over jobs could be overblown, as recent findings reveal that far from getting rid of people, industry bosses are looking to hire more professionals of all types due to Generative AI.
Whatever happens, it’s a case of watch-this-space in this hyper-fast moving AI-tech space!
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