OpenAI has considered designing a humanoid robot for itself. And in the information reported, there were instances referred to as “two people with direct knowledge” of such conversations. Its maker started, in some way, multiple years ago in the space by providing financial support. It has funded Figure and 1X, as well as the other general-purpose AI company known as Physical Intelligence.
OpenAI to Humanoid Robot
To begin with, a humanoid robot is a bipedal robot that is almost similar in structure to a human being and is made for use together with humans. Most of these robots are equipped with next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) to receive feedback from their surroundings and to work.
It can be a part of the firm’s growth strategy, in which it leverages its building stack to enter robotics—a segment it has previously considered before quietly letting go of the robotics team it once had.
In this case, OpenAI is operating in a space that has already been well-staked by players such as Boston Dynamics and Tesla, among others. Some of these include robotics startups of Figure AI, 1X Technologies, and Physical Intelligence. Following the positive performances in the AI sector, it appears that this firm is trying to incorporate GPT models with robots.
OpenAI has also now been funding multiple robotic start-ups through its venture division. In February 2024, the company also participated in funding the Figure AI round with others like Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Intel.
1X Technologies was another start-up that was funded by OpenAI, and OpenAI also assisted in using the GPT AI models in the robots developed by the company. It also invested in Physical Intelligence, a company that specializes in creating artificial intelligence software to enable robots to have physical intelligence.
According to the report, the construction of the humanoid robot is not a very high agenda for OpenAI, which has focused on improving its reasoning model and an AI agent that could ‘assist in automating all kinds of software engineering and analysis tasks.’.
However, the company has shown a fresh appetite for robotics, having been briefly derailed by this stumble. In July of this year, IoT World Today alleged that the ChatGPT creator posted multiple job ads for research engineers in robotics. Looking at the job descriptions, it seemed the research would entail training multimodal LLMs that would ‘unlock new capabilities for our partner’s robots.’