Elon Musk surprised many last week by posting in Korean on social media for the first time. The unexpected reply came on July 3 after Musk shared a meme highlighting the intensifying rivalry among top AI companies.
The meme, posted on X (formerly Twitter), is based on a scene from the American series Person of Interest. It shows three characters from the series labeled as AI firms or products — Anthropic, Cursor, and Musk’s own xAI — aiming weapons at each other in a chain, while all of them are targeted from afar by a figure labeled AGI, short for artificial general intelligence. The image reflects the growing tension among companies racing to develop advanced AI systems with human-level abilities.
Shortly after the post, a Korean user who identifies as a Tesla investor replied with a Korean message that translates to "Elon, wake up." Musk responded with the phrase "I am awake," written in Korean. This was the first time he had used the language in a public post, though he has previously shared videos related to Korean culture, including Olympic shooter Kim Ye-ji and K-pop artist G-Dragon.
The exchange quickly gained attention online, especially among Korean users, and has since been viewed over 2 million times. The original commenter called the reply a "family honor."
The moment comes as Musk's firm, xAI, accelerates its efforts to catch up with AI leaders. According to US media reports, the company raised 10 billion dollars on July 1 through a mix of bonds, loans and equity investments.
Anthropic, backed by Google and Amazon, is known for developing Claude, one of the leading chatbot models. Cursor is a newer coding assistant produced by Anysphere that uses AI to help software developers write and manage code more efficiently. xAI, founded by Musk in 2023, claims to have developed AI that is focused more on truth-seeking and is less influenced by political or cultural filters.
mjh@heraldcorp.com
