OpenAI has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk, alleging he has tried to “harm” the company.
While Musk helped to launch OpenAI, his involvement was “short-lived,” the lawsuit states, adding that the Tesla CEO “could not tolerate seeing such success for an enterprise he had abandoned and declared doomed. He made it his project to take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor that would seize the technological lead—not for humanity but for Elon Musk.”
“Through press attacks, malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk’s more than 200 million followers on the social media platform he controls, a pretextual demand for corporate records, harassing legal claims, and a sham bid for OpenAI’s assets, Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI,” the filing reads.
In a Wednesday statement on X, OpenAI wrote, “Elon’s nonstop actions against us are just bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI and seize control of the leading AI innovations for his personal benefit. Today, we counter-sued to stop him.”
“He’s been spreading false information about us. We’re actually getting ready to build the best-equipped nonprofit the world has ever seen – we’re not converting it away,” the company continued. “Elon’s never been about the mission. He’s always had his own agenda. He tried to seize control of OpenAI and merge it with Tesla as a for-profit – his own emails prove it. When he didn’t get his way, he stormed off.”
OpenAI further stated, “Elon is undoubtedly one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. But these antics are just history on repeat – Elon being all about Elon.”
Last year, Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, claiming the development of artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly” has proven to be false.
Musk’s lawyers claimed the billionaire was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”
“To this day, OpenAI, Inc.‘s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” the lawsuit said.
