In a late Thursday lawsuit, Elon Musk has taken legal action against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of deviating from the company’s original nonprofit mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) for the benefit of humanity. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from its board in 2018, claims that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman initially approached him to establish an open-source nonprofit entity.
According to Musk’s legal team, the Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s focus on profit-making activities is a breach of the original contract. The lawsuit filed in San Francisco also alleges that OpenAI maintained absolute secrecy surrounding the design of GPT-4, its most advanced AI model.
As of now, there has been no immediate response from OpenAI, Microsoft, or Musk regarding the lawsuit.
Musk’s departure from OpenAI coincided with his continued leadership roles at electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and his notable acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022.
Last year, Sam Altman, a serial entrepreneur, faced dismissal from OpenAI’s former board, citing the need to defend the company’s mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity. However, Altman returned shortly after with a new initial board.
The Washington Post reported that OpenAI is set to appoint several new board members in March.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, achieved unprecedented success, becoming the world’s fastest-growing software application within six months of its November 2022 launch. The platform’s popularity prompted the launch of competing chatbots by tech giants such as Microsoft and Alphabet, as well as numerous startups that secured substantial funding amid the generative AI hype.
Since its debut, ChatGPT has found applications in various industries, from summarizing documents to generating computer code. This success has triggered a competitive race among major tech companies to introduce their own generative AI-based offerings.”