Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPTs, claiming that he abandoned the startup’s initial goal of developing artificial intelligence for the good of humanity rather than for financial gain.
The billionaire is at odds with the business he co-founded and is now the face of generative AI, in part because of the billions of dollars in backing from Microsoft, over the lawsuit that was filed late on Thursday in San Francisco.
Musk claimed a breach of contract, claiming that while Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman had initially sought him to create an open source, nonprofit organization, the 2015 venture is now primarily concerned with turning a profit.
He requested a court order compelling OpenAI to release its technology and research to the public and prohibiting the startup from using its resources—including its most sophisticated AI model, GPT-4—for Microsoft or any other person’s financial advantage.
Requests for comment from Reuters were not immediately answered by Musk, Microsoft, or OpenAI.
Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX and operates Tesla and rocketry, purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. Musk has previously advocated for artificial intelligence legislation.
2018 saw him leave the board of OpenAI, and he has frequently chastised Microsoft for its connections with the startup.
“At this point, Microsoft has a very strong say, if not direct control, over OpenAI,” Musk stated during an April 2018 interview with Tucker Carlson.
Following the startup’s boardroom struggle last year, which resulted in Altman’s abrupt removal and return as well as the formation of a new temporary board, the tie-up is currently being investigated for antitrust violations in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
March will see the appointment of multiple new board members for OpenAI, according to a Washington Post story published on Thursday. Microsoft declared in November that it will have an observer seat on the board, with no voting rights.
xAI from MUSK
With his venture xAI, Musk has launched a competing AI initiative that he aims to challenge. The team consists of engineers hired from some of the leading US tech companies, including Google and Microsoft.
The business seeks to construct what Musk has described as a “maximum truth-seeking AI” and began rolling out its ChatGPT competitor Grok for Premium+ customers of social media platform X in December.
A group of AI researchers and industry executives last year asked for a six-month delay in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, citing significant hazards to mankind and society. The billionaire, who has referred to AI as a “double-edged sword,” was one of them.
Since its release, ChatGPT has been used by businesses for a variety of activities, ranging from generating computer code to summarizing documents. This has caused a scramble among Big Tech companies to release their own generative AI-based products.
