Elon Musk Sues OpenAI, Sam Altman For Breaching Agreement, Pursuing Profit

SpaceX founder and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman and some others over a breach of agreement made in 2015. According to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, Sam Altman and Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman sought Elon Musk”s help to make a non-profit company that would work on creating artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

Elon Musk in his suit accused the two of leaving the stated mission of developing AI for the “benefit of humanity” and pursued profit instead. The suit alleged that the then start-up betrayed its promise when it signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft.

The SpaceX CEO, who also runs the electric vehicle company Tesla co-founded OpenAI in 2015. But in 2018, he left the company’s board. The  OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT brought a huge change in the industry, becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing software after its launch in 2022. The ChatGPT also led the competitors too to make rival chatbots, bringing about an AI revolution. The quick acceptance of the product along with its rival chatbots created billion-dollar businesses.

The suit claimed that the ChatGPT maker’s focus on making money broke the agreement. Commercial companies have since its onset depended on ChatGPT for several tasks including the summarisation of documents and writing computer code. The use of the product further prompted the competitors to produce their own chatbots for commercial uses.

OpenAI had fired Sam Altman in November 2023 accusing him of not being candid in his communication with the board. However, the company then took him back in the same month.