Introduction:
In February, there was some commotion when it was revealed that OpenAI had allegedly purchased AI.com flips from ChatGPT to reroute traffic to the ChatGPT web interface. However, Elon Musk, a former backer, Twitter user, and fan of X, suddenly appears to have taken the priceless domain off their hands—or someone else may have done it for him—because AI.com now points to X.ai, the billionaire’s fledgling machine learning research company.
Of course, domains are purchased and sold daily. However, two-letter.com fields are uncommon and extremely expensive, particularly those that form words or well-known abbreviations. Mashable noted that when AI.com began rerouting visitors to OpenAI’s website, the domain could scarcely have sold for less than IT.com did for $3.8 million the year before and probably achieved a much higher price given the hoopla around artificial intelligence in general.
AI.com flips from ChatGPT:
AI.com flips from ChatGPT (Image Source: ghanamma.com)
Undoubtedly, OpenAI thought that purchasing AI.com would attract new users for life. It may have also had plans to eventually transfer its consumer-facing functions, such as ChatGPT’s web client, to the shorter domain. We may never find out, as X.ai has taken over the field.
The news appears to have been initially published by Analytics India Magazine (perhaps a bidder itself at one point). Still, there is little to say about the changeover outside of the transfer itself. It’s just strange and pricey enough to mention here.
With only a few academics and engineers working on it, one can only assume that whatever Musk instructs them to do, X.ai is still primarily an abstract organization. Its professed objective is “to understand the true nature of the universe,” but no discernible advancement has been made since the site’s launch in July. Musk has undoubtedly been active over that period.
