The internet is convinced Elon Musk’s xAI trolled OpenAI’s ‘Dots’ launch

In Brief

On Tuesday, OpenAI launched a caller merchandise called Dots, an always-on AI agent with a bubbly, blobby avatar. While the colorful avatar mightiness evoke a smile, the biggest laughter from the motorboat is (we imagine) being had by Elon Musk, the erstwhile OpenAI laminitis who left, launched rival Grok, and unsuccessfully sued.

That’s due to the fact that the domain “dot.com” belongs to Musk’s xAI, and it presently redirects to the download leafage for xAI’s Grok chatbot app. According to the Whois domain proprietor registry, that domain sanction was conscionable transferred successful July.

It is wholly imaginable that xAI bought the domain for mean domain-buying reasons. “Dot” could beryllium a typo of “bot,” truthful it nabbed it to drawback mistyped searches. We’ve reached retired to xAI and asked. But xAI doesn’t ain the “bot.com” name, nor does it ain different evident typo domains similar “vot.com,” which is listed for sale.

The internet’s mentation is acold funnier: that Musk (or his team) pulled disconnected a prank, getting upwind of OpenAI’s caller merchandise and its sanction and buying the domain name.

In fact, anonymous X idiosyncratic and xAI watcher @birdabo (this idiosyncratic calls themselves “chief shitposting serviceman @SpaceXAI“) was archetypal to spot the domain sanction successful a now-viral post. Whatever the motivation, the condition is funny.

And arsenic for the “dots.com” domain, a much nonstop acceptable to the merchandise name, it presently belongs to a long-defunct company. So if a petty revenge prank was truly the motivation, grabbing that name, too, would beryllium adjacent level.

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