Musk's lawyers argue that OpenAI's current pursuit of profits violates this fundamental agreement
Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, among others, alleging a breach of contractual agreements dating back to the ChatGPT maker's founding in 2015. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco on Thursday, alleges that The OpenAI's focus on the pursuit of profits contradicts the initial agreement made with Musk when the company was created.
According to the lawsuit, Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman initially approached Musk about creating a nonprofit, open source entity dedicated to developing artificial intelligence technology for the betterment of humanity. Musk's lawyers argue that OpenAI's current pursuit of profits violates this fundamental agreement.
Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but resigned from the board in 2018, has taken legal action against the organization he helped establish. So far, there has been no immediate response to Reuters requests for comment from OpenAI, Microsoft or Elon Musk.
ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot, quickly became the world's fastest-growing software application six months after its launch in November 2022. ChatGPT's success fueled the emergence of competing chatbots from major players such as Microsoft and Alphabet, as well as several startups that capitalized on the enthusiasm to raise substantial funding.
The versatile ChatGPT, used by companies for tasks ranging from document summarization to coding, sparked a race among big tech companies to introduce their own AI-based generative offerings. Elon Musk's legal action adds a new layer of complexity to the changing landscape of AI development and collaboration.
