Elon Musk drops lawsuit after OpenAI releases emails

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CNN
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Elon Musk’s lawyers on Tuesday began the process of dismissing the billionaire’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, bringing to an end a months-long legal battle between the artificial intelligence startup’s co-founders.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, filed suit against the ChatGPT developer in February, alleging that the company had abandoned its non-profit mission by reserving some of its cutting-edge AI technology for private customers. The suit sought a jury trial and sought to recover profits from the company, Altman, and co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

However, OpenAI quickly refuted Musk’s claims, calling them “incoherent” and “frivolous,” and arguing in legal papers that the suit should be dismissed. The company also published a blog post featuring several emails from Musk from OpenAI’s early days that appear to show him acknowledging the need to raise significant capital to fund the computing resources needed to further his AI ambitions. This contrasted with his lawsuit’s claims that OpenAI was unfairly profiteering.

Musk’s lawyers did not say why they sought to dismiss the lawsuit in their filing on Tuesday. A hearing on Open AI’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit was scheduled for Wednesday.

The move to drop the lawsuit also came a day after Musk made a series of posts on his social media platform, X, criticizing OpenAI and its handling of user data after Apple announced a partnership to integrate ChatGPT into its digital personal assistant. Siri for users on an opt-in basis.

“If Apple were to integrate OpenAI into its operating system, “If we don’t reach that level, Apple devices will be banned at my company. It would be an unacceptable security breach,” Musk said in the post. (Apple said in its announcement that user queries sent to ChatGPT are not stored by OpenAI.)

Musk’s legal battle with OpenAI illustrated their competing visions for how the ChatGPT maker, whose value has rapidly soared and become a leader in the burgeoning AI field that many see as the future of technology, should be governed.

Musk accused OpenAI of racing to develop powerful “artificial general intelligence” technology to “maximize profits,” while OpenAI accused him of being jealous of his lack of involvement in the startup after he left OpenAI in 2018 following a failed attempt to persuade his co-founders to allow Tesla to buy the company.

But while OpenAI called Musk’s claims “fiction,” Musk is not the only one to have questioned OpenAI’s leadership and direction. The company faced a high-profile leadership crisis last year, which led to Altman being temporarily ousted from the company, likely due to concerns from several executives about the risks of artificial intelligence. After several days of uncertainty and intervention from Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, Altman’s reinstatement in his position was heralded by industry analysts as a victory for those seeking to commercialize AI technology.

More recently, several prominent safety leaders at OpenAI left the company, several of whom publicly alleged that the company prioritized the rapid rollout of new products over safety. A few weeks later, the company announced it had formed a new committee to make recommendations to its board on safety and security.

This story has been updated with additional details and background information.