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Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Great Britain, on November 1, 2023.
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Elon Musk’s lawyers decided Tuesday to dismiss the billionaire’s lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, ending a months-long legal battle between the artificial intelligence startup’s co-founders.
Musk — who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 — sued the company in February, accusing the maker of ChatGPT of abandoning its original nonprofit mission by reserving some of its most advanced AI technologies for private clients. The lawsuit sought a jury trial and for the company, Altman and co-founder and president Greg Brockman to return any profits they received from the business.
But OpenAI quickly dismissed Musk’s claims, calling them “incoherent” and “frivolous” and arguing in a court filing that the case should be dismissed. The company also published a blog post that included several of Musk’s emails from OpenAI’s early days. The emails appeared to show Musk acknowledging the company’s need to make large sums of money to fund the computing resources needed to power its AI ambitions, which contrasted with allegations in its lawsuit that OpenAI was wrongly seeking profit.
Musk’s lawyers did not cite a reason for their request to dismiss the case on Tuesday. A hearing on OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the case has been scheduled for Wednesday.
The decision to drop the lawsuit also came a day after Musk fired off a series of posts on his social media platform X criticizing OpenAI and its handling of user data, after Apple announced a partnership that integrates ChatGPT with personal digital assistant . Siri for opt-in users.
“If Apple integrates OpenAI into the OS (operating system) level, then Apple devices will be banned in my companies. This is an unacceptable security breach,” Musk said in a post. (Apple said as part of its announcement that user queries sent to ChatGPT will not be stored by OpenAI.)
The Musk-OpenAI legal battle represented the differing views on how maker ChatGPT — which has quickly skyrocketed in value and become a leader in the growing AI space that many see as the future of technology — should be managed.
Musk accused OpenAI of rushing to develop powerful “artificial general intelligence” technology to “maximize profits.” OpenAI, in turn, accused Musk of being essentially jealous that he was no longer involved in the startup, after he left OpenAI in 2018 following an unsuccessful attempt to convince his fellow co-founders to allow Tesla to acquire it.
But while OpenAI has called Musk’s claims “a fiction,” the billionaire is not the only person who has raised questions about OpenAI’s leadership and direction. The company last year faced a high-level leadership crisis that led to Altman’s temporary departure from the company, apparently due to several board members’ concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence. After days of uncertainty and an intervention from Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, Altman was restored to his position in what industry analysts said was a victory for those looking to commercialize AI technology.
More recently, several high-profile OpenAI security leaders have left the company, with several publicly stating that the company prioritized launching new products quickly over security. Weeks later, the company said it had created a new committee that would make recommendations to the company’s board on safety and security.
This story has been updated with additional details and context.
