The internet is convinced Elon Musk’s xAI trolled OpenAI’s ‘Dots’ launch

On Tuesday, OpenAI launched a new product called Dots, an always-on AI agent with a bubbly, blobby avatar. While the colorful avatar might evoke a smile, the biggest laugh from the launch is (we imagine) being had by Elon Musk, the former OpenAI founder who left, launched competitor Grok, and unsuccessfully sued.

That’s because the domain “dot.com” belongs to Musk’s xAI, and it currently redirects to the download page for xAI’s Grok chatbot app. According to the Whois domain owner registry, that domain name was just transferred in July.

It is entirely possible that xAI bought the domain for normal domain-buying reasons. “Dot” could be a typo of “bot,” so it nabbed it to grab mistyped searches. We’ve reached out to xAI and asked. But xAI doesn’t own the “bot.com” name, nor does it own other obvious typo domains like “vot.com,” which is listed for sale.