On Wednesday, there were reports in the media that Elon Musk, the world's richest man, had discussed acquiring Character.AI, a startup company that specializes in AI chatbots, under xAI. But Musk quickly denied the reports.

On X that day, Musk announced that his AI startup xAI was not considering acquiring Character.AI.

Earlier media reports cited sources as saying that xAI was considering acquiring Character.AI because the company was looking for more ways to test its Grok AI model.

Sources said that xAI had discussed potential acquisition offers internally, but a deal may not be reached immediately.

In 2023, Musk established xAI, joining the AI arms race of technology giants. Grok is xAI's first product and is also the flagship product. It is a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT.

Musk has said that Grok aims to become a fair and easy conversationalist. "We want to work hard to become the most interesting artificial intelligence," he said.

Character.AI was founded by former Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas in 2021. Shazeer is a co-author of a seminal paper on generative AI, making him a celebrity in the AI industry.

One of Character.AI's most notable features is that it allows users to create and customize various virtual characters. Anyone can make their own customized chatbot and role-play anyone or anything - living, dead, or imagined. Users can interact with animated characters, celebrities, and even custom characters they create themselves.

In May of this year, xAI announced that it had raised $6 billion in Series B funding, with a valuation of over $24 billion. Character.AI, on the other hand, was valued at over $5 billion after its latest round of funding in September last year.

Last month, Musk launched a vote on X asking fans whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI. He also suggested the possibility of integrating xAI technology into Tesla's autonomous driving feature.

Editor/ping