Musk Files New Lawsuit Against Altman, OpenAI

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has filed a new lawsuit against ChatGPT developer OpenAI in his latest move against the company that he co-founded, and with which he now competes through start-up xAI.

Musk’s lawyer said the new lawsuit was “more forceful”.

Similar to the previous suit, the new one, filed on Monday in federal court in Northern California, claims that OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman went against the company’s founding principles by prioritising commercial interests over the public good.

The two along with Musk formed OpenAI in 2015 to develop AI that would benefit humanity, but after Musk’s 2018 departure entered into a multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft that went against the company’s founding spirit, the new suit claims.

‘Perfidy and deceit’

Musk was “betrayed by Mr. Altman and his accomplices”, the suit argues. “The perfidy and deceit is of Shakespearean proportions.”

Musk filed the original lawsuit in Marchand withdrew it without explanation in June, a day before a judge was due to rule on OpenAI’s request for it to be dismissed.

The original suit claimed breach of contract as, it argued, Altman and Brockman had defrauded Musk by, among other things, backtracking on a promise to open-source the company’s technologies in favour of an exclusive licence to Microsoft.

The new lawsuit adds a claim that OpenAI violated federal racketeering laws by conspiring to defraud Musk, his lawyer Marc Toberoff told The New York Times.

“This is a much more forceful lawsuit,” he said.

The new suit also argues that OpenAI’s contract with Microsoft says the Windows maker will no longer have a right to OpenAI’s technology once it reaches the level of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive functions across a range of tasks.

‘Cash cow’

It asks the court to determine whether OpenAI’s systems have achieved AGI and whether the contract with Microsoft should be nullified.

Most experts say no existing system has reached the level of AGI, including OpenAI’s offerings.

In response to the new lawsuit OpenAI pointed to a statement it published in March, which reproduced emails from Musk indicating he tried to turn OpenAI into a commercial operation that would merge with Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla to become its “cash cow”.

“Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves,” said OpenAi spokeswoman Lindsey Held.