Elon Musk Agrees Google Had All The Tools But Still Lost The AI Race To OpenAI, Echoes Social Media Post: 'Having The Pieces Isn't The Same As Playing The Game'

On Tuesday, Elon Musk backed a social media post criticizing Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google for missing the generative AI moment, despite having all the right ingredients long before OpenAI surged ahead.

What Happened: On Monday, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Anthropic, the AI company backed by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, did not break copyright laws when it used books to train its AI model, Claude.

The judge said this was "fair use" because the AI doesn't simply copy or reproduce the books — it learns from them to generate new, original content.

See Also: Pierre Ferragu Takes Apple To Task For Dismissing The AI Revolution: ‘Has Its Head In The Sand’

Following this development, a user took to X, formerly Twitter, and said that Google had all the resources to lead the AI race — such as the transformer model, data, Google Books and massive computing power — but still lost out to OpenAI

"Having the pieces isn’t the same as playing the game," the user said, to which the Tesla CEO replied, "True."

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Why It's Important: Following the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, Google reportedly issued a "Code Red" as it came under fire for falling behind competitors like Microsoft Corporation MSFT, which swiftly integrated ChatGPT-style features into its offerings.

Since then, Google has regained investor confidence with major AI and tech advancements following intense scrutiny since ChatGPT's release, said AllianceBernstein's Tiffany Hsia last year.

Meanwhile, Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the startup in 2018 over some dispute, has now started his own AI venture named xAI. Earlier this month, it was reported that xAI is planning a $300 million share sale that would value the combined company at $113 billion.

This secondary offering enables current employees to sell their shares to new investors and reinforces the valuation set during xAI's March acquisition of the social media platform X.

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