Meta has poached at least 10 artificial intelligence researchers from ChatGPT creator OpenAI, while reportedly offering some other top talent packages worth more than $150 million ($US100 million) in the first year alone for joining its new superintelligence team.

Meta’s push to poach OpenAI talent sparks internal turmoil, bold countermeasures, and a heated battle over the future of artificial general intelligence.

Meta has been aggressively pursuing AI talent from top labs, mostly OpenAI, in an effort to get a leg up on its competition. The details of the developing story are so dramatic and foreign to the rest of the world that it's become stranger-than-fiction fodder for the internet watching it unfold in real time.