Sam Altman is coming for Elon Musk. The OpenAI CEO’s latest venture is a new social media platform to rival X, which Musk acquired in October 2022 for $44 billion. Both titans anticipate that social media platforms can give them an edge in training and marketing their AI products — ChatGPT and Grok respectively.

One thing Musk and Altman have in common is their transformative vision for AI. “With these new [AI] abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today,” Altman wrote in late 2024. AI will be “the most disruptive force in history”, Musk said earlier that year. In their minds, the battle for control of AI decides the future of humanity.

Musk’s vision is that AI becomes integrated with X to form an “everything app”, analogous to Chinese company WeChat. Altman’s prospective platform may indicate similar plans. Several of his competitors — xAI, Meta, and Google — have long benefitted from their platforms because they provide two prominent uses to AI development. First, they accelerate growth by making AI apps available to their user bases. Second, AI companies can use the data generated by users or by user-AI interactions to improve their AI models.

It’s clear that Altman would benefit from having a social media platform of his own, but creating one is easier said than done. X competitors, from Bluesky to Truth Social, have attempted to differentiate themselves by appealing to different ideological positions that may not be represented on the original platform. However, they’ve failed to draw a similar audience. X has an estimated 586 million monthly active users (MAU), 105 million of which are in the US. Meanwhile, Bluesky has an estimated 6.4 million MAU, while Truth social has an estimated 6.3 million MAU — each roughly 1% of X’s users. The incumbent networks of apps like X or Instagram keep users locked in. For someone whose friends remain on the old network, it can be near-impossible to switch.

A natural strategy for Altman could be to build an AI-first social media platform — an app where users expect high-quality bots to reply to their posts and discuss different points of view. This plays to OpenAI’s strengths, not only as a technology, but as a brand. OpenAI could therefore provide a natural home for people who want to engage in lengthy discussions with both ChatGPT and other human users in one venue. In an optimistic scenario, the OpenAI network would form a natural user base for people to experiment with AI followings, developing new norms, styles, and core influencers along the way.

However, most people remain frustrated with social media bots in the present. Meta recently removed its AI account programme in response to user backlash. While OpenAI could improve their models and customise them to engage with posts in positive-sum ways, negative experiences with AI bots will stop many users from even trying an AI-first platform.

Altman’s new venture comes amid a lengthy business and legal rivalry between Musk and OpenAI. On 29 February 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman, alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. On 9 April, OpenAI launched a counter-suit alleging that “Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI.” Part of this disagreement is political: in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the X boss claimed ChatGPT “is being trained to be politically correct”. A paper published by OpenAI in 2021 suggests that this is true for earlier models. “You have a woke, nihilistic — in my opinion — philosophy that is being built into these AIs,” Musk said in another interview, this time not singling out OpenAI.

The heated fight between Musk and Altman stems from their winner-take-all vision of AI, where the first to god-like AI wins a de facto monopoly. AI differs from traditional media technologies by being both the medium and the control system. Becoming the sole provider of AI doesn’t just mean charging monopoly prices — it could mean control of the entire media ecosystem or commercial infrastructure of the internet. An AI-first social media platform not only communicates the views of its users, but controls them at the same time. The combination of autonomous bots and traditional social media algorithms provides a powerful mechanism for controlling public opinion on the platform.

One company gaining a monopoly on AI is not a foregone conclusion. It’s equally possible that the industry remains as competitive as it is now, not only driving the price of AI down, but providing a variety of specialised models with different styles, specialties, abilities, and viewpoints.

Nonetheless, the threat of monopoly is a force that shapes American policy and public life. Among those most concerned is Vice President JD Vance, who promised at the Paris AI Action summit that “our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech and all other developers on a level playing field.” In the Trump administration, the debate over American AI policy shows no sign of subsiding. The rest of us can only look on.

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