Elon Musk may have an ulterior motive for calling on AI companies to halt development, as Twitter bets big on AI.

Musk has been a long-time critic of AI, calling it an existential threat to humanity. The executive was one of many that signed a recent open letter asking companies to pause large-scale AI experimentation until the necessary safeguards are agreed upon.

Despite the rhetoric, it seems Musk may have an ulterior motive, with Insider reporting that Twitter has purchased roughly 10,000 GPUs to build a large-scale AI model. Musk seems intent on building a competitor to ChatGPT, hiring AI engineers to achieve that goal.

Twitter has a major advantage when it comes to creating an AI, as it has massive amounts of data to use for training. Interestingly, OpenAI used Twitter data to help train ChatGPT before Musk shut down the arrangement in December.

Musk’s motives and reasons for wanting a ChatGPT competitor are unclear, with speculation it could be to improve Twitter’s advertising or search features.

An even bigger question is whether Musk was sincere in his concerns about AI development or whether he was simply joining the chorus of calls for a pause in an effort to buy his company time to catch up.