Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Friday alleging the ChatGPT maker abandoned its mission of benefiting humanity in a sprint toward profits.
Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Friday alleging the ChatGPT maker abandoned its mission of benefiting humanity in a sprint toward profits.
Some legal experts who spoke to ABC News, however, cast doubt on Musk’s case.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and X, said upon funding the company at an early stage, he reached an agreement with the company’s leaders, including Altman, on the nonprofit course of the firm, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court and reviewed by ABC News.
Musk did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Neither did Tesla, Altman or OpenAI.
Last year, Musk said, the company “set the Founding Agreement aflame” when it released ChatGPT-4, the most powerful version of its popular chatbot, making the technology available for use by tech giant Microsoft under an exclusive licensing agreement.
“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Musk said in the lawsuit.
The case, legal experts said, centers on the founding agreement alleged by Musk, which he said took place at the outset of the firm.
Typically, deals established between a top investor and company leadership are set out in writing with concrete terms, the experts added, leaving Musk in a difficult position as he attempts to invoke what they say appear to be spoken commitments made years ago without a formal contract.
For his part, Musk says in the lawsuit that the agreement was memorialized in a legal filing when OpenAI was incorporated.
