Musk drops lawsuit against OpenAI
Kyiv • UNN
Elon Musk's lawyers have withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, ending the legal battle over OpenAI's alleged abandonment of its nonprofit mission.
Elon Musk's lawyers on Tuesday dropped the billionaire's lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, ending a months-long legal battle between the artificial intelligence startup's co-founders, UNN reports citing CNN.
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Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, sued the company in February, accusing the ChatGPT maker of abandoning its original nonprofit mission, leaving some of its most advanced AI technology for private clients. The lawsuit called for a jury trial and an order for the company, Altman, and co-founder and president Greg Brockman to return any profits they made from the business.
But OpenAI quickly pushed back against Musk's claims, calling them "inconsistent" and "frivolous" and arguing in a court filing that the case should be dismissed. The company also published a blog post that contained several of Musk's emails from the early days of OpenAI. The emails seemed to show that Musk recognizes the company's need to make large amounts of money to fund the computing resources needed to realize its artificial intelligence ambitions, contradicting claims in his lawsuit that OpenAI is improperly chasing profits.
Musk's lawyers did not give reasons for their request to withdraw the lawsuit on Tuesday. A hearing on OpenAI's motion to dismiss the case was scheduled for Wednesday.
The decision to dismiss the lawsuit also came a day after Musk published a series of posts on his social media platform X criticizing OpenAI and its data processing, after Apple announced a partnership that integrates ChatGPT with Siri, a digital personal assistant for consent-based users.
But while OpenAI has called Musk's claims a "sham," the billionaire is not the only person to raise questions about OpenAI's leadership and direction. Last year, the company faced a high-profile leadership crisis that led to Altman's temporary suspension from the company, apparently due to concerns from several board members about the risks of artificial intelligence. After several days of uncertainty and the intervention of Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, Altman was reinstated in what industry analysts say was a victory for those seeking to commercialize AI technology.
Recently, several senior security leaders at OpenAI have left the company, with some publicly stating that the company prioritizes rapid new product releases over security. A few weeks later, the company announced that it had created a new committee to make recommendations to the board of directors on security issues.
