OpenAI is reportedly considering building humanoid robots, likely as an expansion of its existing intelligence software stack. As per the report, the AI firm has held discussions about entering the robotics space and making human-like robots in particular. The company’s interest in robotics is not new, as it used to have an active robotics division that was abandoned before the release of the GPT-3 artificial intelligence (AI) model. Additionally, OpenAI continues to make investments in several robotics startups via its venture arm.
OpenAI Could Reportedly Enter the Robotics Space
The Information reported on the AI firm’s ambitions of building humanoid robots. Citing two unnamed people with direct knowledge of the matter, the publication claimed that OpenAI has recently considered developing robots that look human-like. However, the report did not reveal if these were just initial discussions or if the ChatGPT maker had a roadmap prepared.
As mentioned above, OpenAI had an active robotics division ever since its inception, although it did not release any products or prototypes. In 2021, OpenAI Co-Founder Wojciech Zaremba, who also led the robotics division, confirmed that the division was being abandoned. In a podcast, he highlighted that a lack of training data was the main reason behind the shutdown, as the team felt the systems could not be taken to the desired level of intelligence.
However, an IoT World Today report earlier this year claimed that OpenAI had opened several job listings for research engineers to join a robotics team. The description reportedly highlighted that the research would have to train multimodal large language models to “unlock new capabilities for our partners’ robots”.
These “partners” could refer to the several robotics startups the AI firm has invested in. OpenAI invested in Figure AI in February 2024 in a funding round led by Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Intel. The company has also invested in 1X Technologies and helps in the integration of the GPT AI models in the startup’s robots. In November, it also invested in Physical Intelligence, a startup developing AI-based software that brings human-like understanding and dexterity to robots.
With limited information, it is difficult to speculate on the company’s vision with humanoid robots. However, with the recent release of the o3 series of advanced reasoning-focused AI models, the company might be planning to build robots that can perform diverse real-world tasks in factories and other settings with just verbal commands.
