Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging contract breach

Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Thursday, accusing the ChatGPT maker of breach of contract for failing to adhere to its original mission to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.

Musk, who co-founded the artificial intelligence (AI) company, alleged that Altman and OpenAI set the company’s founding agreement “aflame” in its partnership with Microsoft. Musk now owns a separate AI company known as xAI.

“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” according to the lawsuit. 

“Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” it continues. “Its technology, including GPT-4, is closed-source primarily to serve the proprietary commercial interests of Microsoft.”

According to the lawsuit, Musk, Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman agreed in 2015 that OpenAI would be a nonprofit that developed artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity and would remain open source, an agreement that they “reaffirmed with Mr. Musk on multiple occasions.”

However, with the advent of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model in March 2023, the lawsuit argues Altman “caused OpenAI to radically depart from its original mission and historical practice of making its technology and knowledge available to the public.”

Unlike with earlier models, the AI company did not provide details about GPT-4’s internal design, a move that Musk argued was primarily driven by commercial considerations.

The lawsuit also alleges that GPT-4 represents an early version of artificial general intelligence and should be outside the scope of Microsoft’s license with OpenAI, which only applied to the company’s pre-AGI technology.

OpenAI’s board is charged with determining whether the company has attained artificial general intelligence, according to the lawsuit. However, as Musk noted, the board underwent significant changes in November, when Altman was briefly ousted as CEO.

Musk alleged that Altman and Brockman “exploited Microsoft’s significant leverage” over OpenAI and forced the majority of the board to resign. 

Altman was reinstated as CEO at OpenAI just days after his initial ouster, and a new board was formed, which Musk claimed was “hand-picked by Mr. Altman and blessed by Microsoft.”