Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, along with others for allegedly a breach of contractual agreements established during his involvement in founding the ChatGPT-making company in 2015. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in San Francisco.
The lawsuit alleges that Altman, along with OpenAI’s co-founder Greg Brockman, initially approached Musk to establish an open-source, non-profit company dedicated to developing artificial intelligence technology for the betterment of humanity, according to a report by Reuters. Musk’s lawyers argue in the lawsuit that the company’s current focus on profit-seeking violates this agreement.
OpenAI, Microsoft, and Musk have not yet responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but resigned from the company’s board in 2018. He also serves as the CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, quickly became the world’s fastest-growing software application. Its success spurred the introduction of rival chatbots from Microsoft, Alphabet, and numerous startups, which capitalized on the hype to secure significant funding.
Since its inception, ChatGPT has been adopted by various companies for tasks ranging from document summarization to writing code, triggering a race among major tech companies to develop their own generative AI-based offerings.
