For An Undisclosed Sum, OpenAI Acquires Startup Founded By Ex-Instagram Employees

(CTN News) – OpenAI continues to make progress.

Earlier today, ChatGPT and Dall-E 2, the company behind the games, announced that Global Illumination, Inc. has been acquired by the company that developed ChatGPT and Dall-E 2.

Global Illumination was founded in 2021 by a trio of former Facebook and Instagram employees — Thomas Dimson, Taylor Gordon, and Joey Flynn — whose responsibilities at Meta included engineering and product design.

OpenAI writes in a blog post announcing the acquisition that Global Illumination, Inc. “has been using artificial intelligence to build creative tools, infrastructure, and digital experiences,” adding that Global Illumination, Inc. As well as YouTube, Google, Pixar, Riot Games, and other notable companies, the team has made significant contributions.

There are some web users who have hailed the move as an excellent “acqui-hire” for OpenAI, i.e. acquiring new talent via the acquisition of an entire company or team.

According to OpenAI,

The talent from Global Illumination will work on the company’s core products, including ChatGPT.

Yet Global Illumination’s name and previous work appear to be focused on visual-focused products and services, suggesting OpenAI may be pursuing multimedia features for ChatGPT, expanding its Dall-E 2 image generation service, or perhaps launching a video generation product to rival fellow New York City startup Runway’s Gen-2 text-to-video generator.

A massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) based on the web has recently been developed by Global Illumination.

Additionally, “global illumination” has been used in computer graphics for many years to describe algorithms that create realistic lighting effects on 3D objects.

In 1986, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researcher James “Jim” Kajiya developed the first algorithm for global illumination.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed by either company. OpenAI and Global Illumination have been contacted for further information, and VentureBeat will continue to monitor the situation.

SEE ALSO:

Snapchat’s My AI Posts To Stories, But Snap Confirms It’s Just a Glitch