Elon Musk Seemingly Admits xAI Has Used OpenAI's Models to Train Its Own

While testifying on Thursday in federal court, Elon Musk seemed to indicate that his AI lab may have used OpenAI’s models to train xAI’s own. He touched upon the topic while sitting on the witness stand answering cross-examination questions from an OpenAI attorney amid his ongoing legal battle against the ChatGPT-maker.

This is the exchange, as best as WIRED could capture it:

OpenAI Lawyer William Savitt: Do you know what distillation is?

Musk: It means to use one AI model to train another AI model.

Savitt: Has xAI done that with OpenAI?

Musk: Generally all the AI companies [do that].

Savitt: So that’s a yes.

Musk: Partly.

Distillation is a technique where a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the behavior of a larger, more capable model, making it cheaper and faster to run while preserving much of its performance.

OpenAI’s lawyer, William Savitt, then asked whether OpenAI’s technology had been used in any way to develop xAI.

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