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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

The timing of the Dall-E 2 launch an hour ago seems to correspond with a recent piece of investigative journalism by Buzzfeed News about one of Sam Altman's other ventures, published 15 hours ago and discussed elsewhere actively on HN right now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614

I point this out because while Dall-E 2 seems interesting (I'm out of my depth, so delegating to the conversation taking place here), the timing of its release as well as accompanying press blasts within the last hour from sites like TheVerge—verified via wayback machine queries and time-restricted googling—seems both noteworthy and worth a deeper conversation given what was just published about Worldcoin.

To be clear, it's worth asking if Dall-E 2 was published ahead of schedule without an actual product release (only a waitlist) to potentially move the spotlight away from Worldcoin.

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I'm not a huge fan of these coordination theories. But a few things worth noting:

- In support of your argument, the Buzzfeed News investigation likely has been in the works for weeks, meaning Altman et al have had more than just a couple days to throw together a Dall-E 2 soft launch

- However, weren't OpenAI's GPT (2 and 3) announced to the world in similar fashion? e.g. demos and whitepapers and waitlists, but not a full product release?

- Throwing together a Dall-E 2 soft launch just in time to distract from the investigation would require a conspiracy, i.e. several people being at least vaguely aware that deadlines have been accelerated for external reasons. Is the Worldcoin story big enough to risk tainting OpenAI, which seems like a much more prominent part of Altman's portfolio?

For discussion's sake:

- BFN reached out to A16Z, Worldcoin, Khosla Ventures largely declined to comment, which would mean that at least one person probably had a bit of runway from at least when the requests for comment were submitted. So yeah, you're probably right.

- Going from the github repos for GPT 2 and 3, those may have been hard launches:

Feb 14 2019, predating the first press for GPT-2 by a few days (was probably made public Feb 14 though) - https://github.com/openai/gpt-2/commit/c2dae27c1029770cea409...

May 28 2020, timed alongside the press news for GPT-3 - https://github.com/openai/gpt-3/commit/12766ba31aa6de490226e...

- Would it really have to be a conspiracy? Sounds like only one person would have to target a specific date or date range, and without really giving a reason.

One of the things that puts a hole in my own thinking here is that Sam Altman's name isn't really tied to the Dall-E 2 release. It's just OpenAI, and the press around Sam's name today still exclusively surfaces just this one Worldcoin story (https://news.google.com/search?q=sam+altman+when%3A1d&). So if this was actually intended to bury another story, Sam's name would have to have been included in all the press blasts to be successful. But the Buzzfeed story seems like it kinda died alone on the vine.

I don't have any knowledge (inside or otherwise) but the Worldcoin thing already came in for several rounds of abuse on HN, so it's kind of a scandal of the second freshness at this point.

I listed some of them here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30934732, just because I remembered there had been previous discussions and listing related previous discussions is a thing.

Genuine question: how are the two stories even related? It’s certainly not apparent from the BuzzFeed article (or at least a quick skim of it).

Sam Altman is OpenAI's CEO.

What I'm submitting for consideration is that the marketing page and associated press blasts (there's a live influencer reaction video airing right now about Dall-E 2, for instance) for Dall-E 2 were potentially pushed up to offset negative press from Worldcoin for their shared founder.

I'd like to be wrong. But it's too well timed.

Maybe I’m naive, but I see this as a coincidence. If it was an hour later, then maybe there would be something.

If the article GP refers to was posted 16 hours ago instead of 15, would that really make a difference?

Another consideration, then: it was published to HN almost instantly after it was released to the world, 52 minutes after the HN post about Worldcoin was submitted and started showing traction.

I don't see the publication of a marketing page (again, not a finished product) for a product founded by someone who's other main venture is being investigated by journalists for misleading claims as being a coincidence, but if the timing matters and 14-15 hours doesn't seem like it works for the assertion in your mind, then perhaps the Dall-E 2 page going live less than an hour after the Worldcoin HN submission fits the bill.

I've got no horse in this race. I'm just drawing attention to familiar PR strategies used for brand risk mitigation, that's all.

What's the idea here? They quickly put out this to somehow hide other stories?

Yes, especially given there's no actual product release, only a waitlist.

Easy to put together a marketing piece on short notice or potentially even push a pending marketing page out to production with a waitlist rather than links to production or even beta quality services.

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