Musk sues ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for breaching founding principles

Investing.com -- Elon Musk has sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence darling he helped establish of violating its central goal of aiding humanity.

In a filing in San Francisco on Thursday, Musk said that OpenAI was founded as a not for profit AI lab that would attempt to compete with tech giants like Alphabet-owned Google, although with the express purpose of "benefit[ing] humanity, not [...] a for-profit company seeking to maximize" shareholder returns.

However, he alleged that while OpenAI continues to "profess that charter," it has been "transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidary" of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), one of its biggest backers.

"Its technology [...] is closed-source primarily to serve the proprietary commercial interests of Microsoft," the lawsuit said.

Musk also took aim at OpenAI's leadership, which underwent a roller-coaster 2023 that saw the dismissal and eventual reinstatement of Chief Executive Sam Altman. Musk argued that Altman and President Greg Brockman used Microsoft's "leverage over OpenAI" to orchestrate the ouster of board members who had been responsible for safeguarding the firm's original mission.

New board members that were "hand-picked by Altman and blessed by Microsoft" were then appointed, according to the suit. It also claimed that these officials are "ill equipped by design to make an independent determination of whether and when OpenAI has attained [artificial generative intelligence] -- and hence when it has developed an algorithm that is outside the scope of Microsoft’s license."

OpenAI, Musk, and Microsoft all did not respond to requests for comment, Reuters reported.

OpenAI is planning to name several additional board members in March, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, as regulatory scrutiny on the firm intensifies. Other media reports have said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating whether OpenAI misled investors during the major executive-level upheaval.