Sam Altman’s 8-Word Response to Meta’s Rumored ChatGPT Clone Is a Master Class

According to CNBC, Meta plans to launch a standalone app for AI during the second quarter of this year. There are few details available about what that might mean, except that it seems likely Meta will charge a monthly subscription, in line with existing players like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini. If you’re the CEO of one of those companies, you’re probably thinking about how that might affect your business. After all, Meta is one of the largest companies in the world, with more than three billion users. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn’t seem all that worried. In a response posted on X, Altman suggested that his company will just “Uno reverse them,” and “do a social app” of its own. Look, I don’t think that OpenAI is launching some kind “ChatGPT With Friends” social app any time soon, but those eight words—”ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app”—are actually an interesting lesson. First of all, it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that Meta would do this. Meta has never seen a good idea it wasn’t happy to steal from a competitor. In fact, almost every widely used feature in any of Meta’s apps started elsewhere. It’s kind of Mark Zuckerberg’s thing to see what the competition is doing and try to cut it off by just co-opting whatever feature people seem to love. You might argue it’s a gift, really. It has certainly been a successful model. Also, if Meta is serious about its AI chat ambitions, a standalone app seems like the only way to get there. I’m sure there are people who use Meta AI within the company’s various apps, but I’ve never talked to anyone who opens Instagram to chat with AI. They go to see what their friends are up to or get inspired by photos of other people’s lives, or to share funny videos. Still, this would represent an interesting change to Meta’s business model, which typically involves free apps and services that mostly serve as a way to target users with personalized ads. It makes sense that Meta would have to charge—AI inference is far more expensive than serving posts and showing ads—but this is a big shift. Meta is very much a consumer brand, which could expose generative AI tools to a much wider audience. I think a standalone Meta AI app could pose a real threat to ChatGPT in ways that other competitors have not. ChatGPT’s biggest advantage has been that it was first and its name is synonymous with AI for a lot of people. At the same time, it seems as though most of the people paying for ChatGPT or other similar AI tools are doing so for work or business reasons. I’m not sure how many of them will pay for another one. The most important thing here, however, is that Altman’s response is kind of perfect. No, not the part about OpenAI introducing a social app. I doubt that will actually happen—though I agree it would be funny, even if just on principle. Altman’s response does two things that serve as a master class to handling this kind of situation. First, and most important, it’s funny. Altman has mastered the art of reading the room and knowing his audience. On social media, Altman comes across as laid back and unaffected by the challenge to his business. I have no idea what he’s like in person, but this is the exact right way to respond in this environment. Second, Altman manages to highlight the biggest criticism you can make about Meta, which is the part where all of its best features are just copies of other people’s ideas. There’s not a lot you can do about that, except stay focused on what you’re doing instead of getting distracted by the threat of Meta coming for your business. If you look how quickly Meta was able to spin up Threads just by leveraging its existing social graph, there is no doubt in my mind that it could easily launch an app and have a few hundred million users in a short amount of time. If you’re Sam Altman, there is almost nothing you can do about that except continue making your product better. Oh, and have a sense of humor about the whole thing. EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN