OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a year ago, said Friday it had dismissed CEO Sam Altman in a shock firing of a central figure in the AI revolution.

Axar.az reports that Altman became a tech world sensation with the release nearly a year ago of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot with unprecedented capabilities, churning out human-level content like poems or artwork in just seconds.

His dismissal caught the tech world by surprise, with rumors rife on social media as to the cause of the sudden sacking.

A statement about the firing by OpenAI referred to its stated mission of making sure AI benefits everyone and said that new leadership is needed for the company to move forward.

Fellow OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman was pushed from the company's board in the shakeup and put out late in the day that he quit.

"I'm super proud of what we've built... but based on today's news, I quit," Brockman said in a post at X, formerly known as Twitter.