He left Google when the company failed to back his chatbot Meena and was tempted back when Google subsequently bought the company he founded, Character.AI, for $2.7 billion. That company achieved notoriety when it was sued by a grieving mother, who alleged that a Character.AI chatbot had contributed to her son’s death by suicide. The company subsequently settling out of court.
Shazeer has since been working as the co-lead on Google’s Gemini project. It’s not clear what role he will play at OpenAI, but hiring someone with his background shortly before the company’s IPO could be an attractive move for investors.
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