Altman to return as OpenAI CEO

NEW YORK

ChatGPT creator OpenAI has announced that Sam Altman would return as its CEO, days after his shock dismissal plunged the pioneering artificial intelligence firm into crisis.

Hundreds of OpenAI staff had threatened to quit following Altman's sacking on Nov. 17, demanding in a letter released to the media the resignation of the board, as speculation swirled about the future of the company.

His dramatic exit also sparked intense lobbying from OpenAI's biggest investors, including tech titan Microsoft, for his return.

OpenAI wrote on X that it "reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo."

In the fast-moving sequence of events, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had announced this week that he would hire Altman and members of his team to lead AI research.

But Altman said on on Nov. 21 that Nadella was backing his return to OpenAI.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, incorporating its tech into various products including its search engine Bing.

Nadella had said that "governance changes" were needed at OpenAI to avoid such disruptive surprises.

The announcement of Altman's return appeared to cap the rollercoaster events unleashed by his firing.

The OpenAI board, which included widely respected AI researcher and company co-founder Ilya Sutskever, on Sunday stood by its decision to dismiss Altman and appointed Emmett Shear as interim CEO.

But that did little to quell the outrage within the company or the unease among OpenAI's investors.

Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data to enable them to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

They are also used to generate and manipulate imagery.

But the tech has triggered warnings about the dangers of its misuse - from blackmailing people with "deepfake" images to the manipulation of images and harmful disinformation.