ChatGPT parent company OpenAI fires CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI, the company behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT, fired its CEO and founder, Sam Altman, on Friday. His stunning departure sent shockwaves through the budding AI industry.

The company, in a statement, said an internal investigation found that Altman was not always truthful with the board.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in its statement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

OpenAI announced Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is chosen.

In a tweet following the news, Altman said he “loved my time at openai.”

‘it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people,” he said. “will have more to say about what’s next later.”

The news follows OpenAI’s first developer conference held in San Francisco last week, where Altman served as the master of ceremonies, unveiling a series of new artificial intelligence tool updates, including the ability for developers to create custom versions of ChatGPT. He also shared about 2 million developers now use the platform, and about 90% of Fortune 500 companies are using the tools internally. It currently has 100 million active users.

Sam Altman warns AI could kill us all. But he still wants the world to use it

ChatGPT launched late last year, making Altman an overnight quasi-celebrity and the face of a new crop of AI tools that can generate images and texts in response to simple user prompts. The technology is called generative AI and has since been deployed by Microsoft on its search engine and other tools. Google has a rival called “Bard,” and other generative AI tools have been developed in recent months.

Not long after its release, ChatGPT became a household name almost synonymous with AI itself. CEOs used it to draft emails, people built websites with no prior coding experience, and it passed exams from law and business schools.

Although Altman has long been an advocate of AI, he is also one of its biggest critics. In testimony before Congress earlier this year, Altman described the technology’s current boom as a pivotal moment.