OpenAI is reportedly working on a social media platform that could compete directly with X and Meta’s Instagram. According to The Verge, multiple sources close to the matter say the AI company is already testing internal prototypes. 

The project is still in the early stages, but insiders told The Verge that it centers on OpenAI’s latest image-generation capability, “Images in ChatGPT,” launched in March. This feature allows users to generate visual content from text or other images directly within ChatGPT. These visuals include logos, business cards, art edits, and social media-style portraits. 

The recent trend of people turning their selfies into stylized, AI-rendered avatars has helped drive buzz across social platforms, especially on X. This traction seems to be what sparked OpenAI’s internal push to build a social feed into the ChatGPT experience, The Verge explained.

Will it be a standalone app or part of ChatGPT?

It's not clear if the social platform will live inside the ChatGPT interface or launch as a separate app, the report said. But either option has implications for reach. ChatGPT was the most downloaded app globally last month, meaning OpenAI already has a massive mobile audience it could tap into.

Building a network around ChatGPT could keep users in the app longer, allow for more creative outputs, and make it easier to collect training data from user activity. Launching a new app would also position OpenAI more aggressively in the social space, but would require fresh user adoption.

Competition with X, Meta, and similar platforms

If OpenAI moves ahead with this social platform, it will enter a highly competitive space. It would face direct pressure from X, Meta, and other social media platforms. 

All of this is playing out in the middle of a very public battle between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, had sued the company, claiming it moved away from its original nonprofit mission. OpenAI countered with a lawsuit earlier this month, accusing Musk of harassment and trying to block its transition to a for-profit business. A court recently blocked Musk’s attempt to halt OpenAI’s for-profit restructuring.

In February, Musk offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion. Altman shot back, saying: “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” 

Building a social app will also place OpenAI as a rival to Meta. Meta already considers itself a competitor to OpenAI. Plans to build an AI-powered search engine like OpenAI’s SearchGPT in underway. Meta says it’s aiming to reduce its reliance on Google and Microsoft’s Bing. 

With the current popularity of video content, it is also unclear whether this feature will have video capabilities. OpenAI’s current feature set focuses on images, but short-form video apps like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts raise the question of whether OpenAI will eventually expand into that territory too. 

What makes this interesting for marketers?

Launching a social network could mean a new place for advertisers to test AI-generated creative, distribute branded content, or even run campaigns built off user-generated content powered by OpenAI’s tools. 

If OpenAI rolls out a social app, it gains what X, Meta, and TikTok already have: real-time user behavior and content at scale. That kind of data is important for training AI models, and right now, OpenAI doesn’t have a direct firehose the way Musk’s xAI or Meta’s Llama models do.

As The Verge said, Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, is trained using content from X. Meta also trains its Llama models on social interactions, engagement, and posts from Instagram and Facebook. A social network would give OpenAI its own feedback loop.

‍