*

Trump could be in office when artificial general

intelligence

developed, CFO says

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OpenAI keeps access to video generation tool Sora gated

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ChatGPT user growth is accelerating again

(Recasts with comments on Trump)

By Krystal Hu

NEW YORK, Dec 10 (Reuters) - President-elect Donald

Trump could be the "president of this AI generation" as he will

take office at a time when critical infrastructure to developing

artificial general intelligence (AGI) is built out, OpenAI Chief

Financial Officer Sarah Friar said.

"He's going to be right there at the beginning of it, maybe

even as things like AGI, we get there," she said on Tuesday,

referring to autonomous systems that surpass humans in most

economically valuable tasks.

She also played down public threats to the ChatGPT maker

from Elon Musk, one of Trump's closest advisers.

Friar, in response to questions from Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Alessandra Galloni during an interview at the Reuters NEXT

conference in New York, said about Musk's threats: "We trust

him...as a competitor, (he) will put first the national interest

and compete appropriately."

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has publicly opposed OpenAI's

major corporate structure revamping to remove control of its

nonprofit board. He now runs xAI, an OpenAI competitor, and has

emerged as a close adviser in Trump's transition team.

Trump has chosen him, along with former Republican

presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to head

a task force aimed at slashing government spending and

regulations.

Friar, who previously led social media firm Nextdoor and

joined OpenAI six months ago as its first chief financial

officer, said the company has seen huge demand for its video

generation tool Sora, which was released this week.

Account creation has been suspended since then, and Friar did

not offer a specific timeline for when it would resume.

"Some of it is just we need capacity, but a lot of it is

also we want to be measured...it's only available to a very

small selection of people today, because we want to listen and

learn," said Friar, adding the company is taking a different

release approach for Sora from ChatGPT.

"There are places where we will go a little slower to make

sure that we are constantly moving safety first as well."

Besides video generation, she said she also anticipates more AI

agent products - software programs that perform tasks

autonomously on behalf of users - can handle day-to-day tasks to

be released in the new year, with foundation models gaining

better reasoning capabilities.

"I think we are going to see a lot of motion next year

around agents, and I think people are going to be surprised at

how fast this technology comes at us," she said.

The fast-growing startup is also working on developing a new

dynamic with its largest investor and tech partner, Microsoft ( MSFT )

.

"We think about it ... in terms of helping each other grow,

but also recognizing that diversification is a good thing as

well, in terms of growing the whole industry," Friar added.

Despite the controversy over its governance restructuring

and the recent exodus of executives, OpenAI continues to

experience rapid expansion, she said.

Friar said the company sees a "re-acceleration" in ChatGPT

user growth, which surged to 300 million weekly active users

from 200 million in August this year, attributing it to the

launch of new reasoning models such as o1.