Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: The Legal Feud Returns

Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, by filing a new lawsuit on August 5 in California. This follows Musk's earlier decision to drop a similar case in June.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, initially sued the organization in February, accusing it of abandoning its nonprofit roots. He temporarily withdrew his lawsuit after OpenAI released a blog post that included some of his private communications.

In his latest legal filing, Musk accuses Altman of manipulating him into supporting OpenAI under the guise of it being a nonprofit. Musk claims he invested heavily in terms of time, money, and recruitment efforts, only for Altman to later pivot the organization towards profit-making.

OpenAI’s March blog post included emails suggesting Musk was aware of, and even supported, this shift. It stated that both parties recognized the necessity of a for-profit model to secure the resources needed for developing advanced AI.

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Despite this, Musk has since become a critic of OpenAI, condemning it as a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft” in a 2023 post on his social media platform, X.

Meanwhile, X is reportedly under investigation by Irish regulators due to allegations that user data might have been used to train Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.

Alexander Stefanov