Elon Musk has opened a lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing the company of breaching its founding mission to be a non-profit.
Musk is alleging that company behind ChatGPT are now chasing profits over benefiting humanity, and is no longer making its technology freely available as per its original goal.
Filed in a California court, the lawsuit claims that OpenAI has moved to a for-profit-model after its partnership with Microsoft.
“In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit read, as report by TechCrunch. “This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement.”
Musk donated over $44 million to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, but left the company’s board in 2018. Since then, he was offered a for-profit stake in the company, which he refused.
Musk is using OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft as the main push for his lawsuit, alleging that OpenAI is now serving Microsoft’s interests rather than developing technology for the good of humanity.
Recommended reading
- CMA Seeks Views on Microsoft Partnership With OpenAI
- Elon Musk Launches New Artificial Intelligence Startup, xAI
- OpenAI Faces Lawsuit Over Potential ChatGPT GDPR Violations
The lawsuit also alleges that OpenAI’s GPT-4 model relies on AGI – an AI model with the intelligence on par with humans. Musk claims that OpenAI and Microsoft are not properly licensing the model.
Musk is aiming to urge OpenAI to not monetise its technologies, and also change the designation of GPT-4 so it cannot be licensed.





