Twitter CEO Elon Musk has announced his intention to launch an artificial intelligence company, TruthGPT, to rival Microsoft-owned ChatGPT.

“I’m going to start something which is called TruthGPT, or an absolute truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Mr Musk said in a Fox News interview whose excerpts aired on Monday.

He also accused Microsoft-backed ChatGPT “of training the AI to lie.”

Mr Musk believes AI has the potential to end civilisation but stressed that his safety concerns would be carefully considered in creating TruthGPT.

“I think this might be the best path to safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe. It is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.”

Mr Musk, a cofounder of Open AI in 2015, has become a staunch critic of the platform ever since he left the company in 2018.

Last month, the billionaire joined more than 1,000 people calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development, claiming he did not want OpenAI to create a more potent version than its just-released GPT-4.

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production,” he warned in the interview with Fox News.