Sam Altman's AI-Generated Cricket Avatar Sparks Speculation on OpenAI's India Strategy

Sam Altman's AI image in India cricket jersey sparks questions

"Now awaiting your India announcement. How much are you allocating out of that $40bn to India," another user asked, alluding to the record funding recently secured by Altman for his firm, OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT. Yet another user put into words a pattern he seemed to have spotted in Altman's recent social media posts - and a question that seems to be on many Indian users' minds. "Over the past few days, you've been praising India and Indian customers a lot. How did this sudden love for India come about? It feels like there's some deep strategy going on behind the scenes," he wrote on X. While the comment may sound a bit conspiratorial, there's some truth to at least part of it. Just hours before Altman shared his image in the cricket jersey, he'd shared a post on X praising India's adoption of AI technology. He said it was "amazing to watch" and that it was "outpacing the world". This post too went viral in India, while the media wrote numerous stories documenting users' reactions to it. Someone even started a Reddit thread which quite comically aired the Redditor's curiosity, and perhaps, confusion. "Can someone tell me what Sam Altman is talking about here in his tweet?" the person posted on Reddit sharing Altman's post. A few days earlier, Altman had retweeted Studio Ghibli-style images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which were shared by the federal government's citizen engagement platform. All these posts of Altman have generated a fair amount of comments questioning his motives. The scepticism around Altman's perceived courting of India could be because of his past views on the country's AI capabilities. During a visit in 2023, he had sounded almost dismissive of small Indian start-ups making AI tools that could compete with OpenAI's creations. Asked at a event how a small, smart team with a low budget of about $10m could build substantial AI foundational models, he answered that it would be "totally hopeless" to attempt this but that entrepreneurs should try anyway. But when Altman visited India again this year, he had changed his tune. In a meeting with federal minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in February, Altman expressed an eagerness to collaborate with India on making low-cost AI models. He also praised India for its swift pace of adopting AI technologies and revealed that the country was OpenAI's second-largest market, with users tripling over the past year.

Sam Altman Wants to Play Cricket with Sachin Tendulkar

"What's happening with AI adoption in India right now is amazing to watch. We love to see the explosion of creativity -- India is outpacing the world." OpenAI chief Sam Altman wants to play cricket with Indian batting legend Sachin Tendulkar. A few days ago, Tendulkar shared Ghibli-style images of himself from the 2011 World Cup victory alongside the trophy. Altman replied, "want to play?" He even shared his own Ghibli-style artwork, depicting himself playing cricket in an Indian jersey. Since OpenAI launched image generation in GPT-4o, social media platforms like X and Instagram have been flooded with Ghibli-style images. Users have been sharing their personal photos in anime style, making it a viral trend. "The ChatGPT launch 26 months ago was one of the craziest viral moments I'd ever seen, and we added one million users in five days. We added one million users in the last hour," Altman said in a post on X. India emerged as one of the largest user bases for this trend, catching even Altman's attention. "What's happening with AI adoption in India right now is amazing to watch. We love to see the explosion of creativity -- India is outpacing the world," Altman wrote in a post on X. Notably, the image generation capability is rolled to free users as well. It seems that OpenAI is now aggressively targeting the Indian market, as India is the second-largest user base of ChatGPT. Altman also shared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ghibli-style images featuring the Indian flag on X. OpenAI is also reportedly in talks with Reliance Industries about a potential partnership to integrate ChatGPT and other AI tools into the latter's businesses. The Sam Altman-led company is seeking to leverage Reliance's businesses, such as wireless carrier Jio, to distribute or sell its AI services, possibly including ChatGPT. The startup has considered reducing ChatGPT's subscription price in India by as much as 85% to attract more paid users. Currently priced at $20 per month, the subscription is costly relative to India's median salary. A potential partnership with Jio, Reliance's telecom subsidiary, could allow ChatGPT to be bundled into mobile plans at a lower rate. OpenAI recently raised $40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation. The company stated that this funding will help push the frontiers of AI research, scale compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week.

Sam Altman courts Indian cricket fans with anime transformation

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared an anime-style image of himself as an Indian cricket player, sparking mixed reactions online. The image, features Altman with a cricket bat and an "India" jersey. This shows growing interest in India's AI landscape and Altman's engagement with the market.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared an anime-style portrayal of himself in his latest post -- as an Indian cricket player. Abandoning the Studio Ghibli-style art that recently sparked a wave of user-generated AI artworks on social media, he posted, "prompt: sam altman as a cricket player in anime style." The image shows Altman holding a cricket bat and sporting a jersey with emblazoned "India" on it. Reactions on social media were mixed. Some users posted AI-generated images of Altman in different styles, from caricatures to playing entirely different sports, including basketball. One user asked, "Why did it choose India to represent you? GPT probing your tweets in real time?" Another commented, "What a great example of free marketing strategy to the largest share of users untapped, integrating the current viral product feature. Well done @sama." A third user commented: "The sudden surge in India-related tweets sparks speculation about a major collaboration. India is the world's MAU farm." In an earlier post, Altman had talked about how India is emerging as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, with an unprecedented surge in innovation and creativity. "What's happening with AI adoption in India right now is amazing to watch. We love to see the explosion of creativity -- India is outpacing the world," he said. On Wednesday, he teased an enhanced version of ChatGPT's image-generating feature on X, saying, "y'all are not ready for images v2..."