SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 — OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said on Tuesday he is leaving the ChatGPT maker.

"After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI,” he said in a post on X.

Sam Altman, CEO of the Microsoft-backed company said Jakub Pachocki will be the company’s new chief scientist.

Pachocki has previously served as OpenAI’s director of research and led the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five.

"OpenAI would not be what it is without him,” Altman said, referring to Sutskever.

Ilya Sutskever was removed from OpenAI’s board in November last year, after he joined in the effort to fire Altman but later signed an employee letter demanding his return.

Altman was fired from the company in November without any detailed cause, sparking confusion about the future of the startup but he was soon given back the reins of the company.

Sutskever’s exit comes a day after the company said at an event on Monday that it would release a new AI model called GPT-4o, capable of realistic voice conversation and able to interact across texts and images.

Shortly after launching in late 2022, ChatGPT was called the fastest application ever to reach 100 million monthly active users. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT’s website has been on a roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb. — Reuters