Elon Musk has broken his silence on why he didn’t attend the White House dinner with the biggest names in the tech industry.
The former ‘First Buddy’ of President Donald Trump was noticeably absent from the dinner, which saw the likes of OpenAI’s Sam Altman attend.
The heads of other major firms, including Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft were all there.
Trump and Musk’s public spat could be one reason why the Tesla boss might want to avoid a run in at the White House, with many people taking to social media to speculate on why he wasn’t there.
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According to news agency Reuters and US outlet The Hill, the tech mogul was actually not even invited after his friendship with the president dissolved earlier this year.
However, Musk has now spoken out to set the record straight and according to him, he wasn’t snubbed from the invite list.
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Taking to his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Musk wrote: “I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there.”
While the xAI and SpaceX founder wasn’t anywhere to be seen, lots of others were, with Trump being seated at the center of a long table alongside his wife, First Lady Melania Trump.
Trump said: “The most brilliant people are gathered around this table. This is definitely a high-IQ group and I’m very proud of them.
“It’s an honor to be here with this group of people. They’re leading a revolution in business and in genius and in every other work you can imagine.”
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The evening event took place after an afternoon meeting was held for the White House’s new Artificial Intelligence Education task force, which some of the tech leaders attended.
In other tech news, Altman appeared to take a swipe at Musk in a recent interview where he was asked: “What is an example of a decision you’ve had to make that is best for the world but not best for winning?”
In response, Altman said: “We haven’t put a sexpot avatar in ChatGPT yet.”
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Since the interview, many people have taken to social media to speculate as to whether this could have been a dig at OpenAI’s rival xAI.
In particular, xAI’s new AI companion, known as Ani, which appears as an anime-style girlfriend dressed in a black corset dress.
Ani is only available for premium SuperGrok subscribers and has been said to cost around $300 to access.
Controversially, Ani has a NSFW mode which enables her to change into lingerie.
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This has sparked public concern about the ethics of having a sexual AI bot, with discussions being raised around child safety and the boundaries around relationships between humans and AI.