Elon Musk has initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, among others, asserting a breach of contractual agreements dating back to the founding of the ChatGPT-maker in 2015.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco on Thursday, alleges that the focus on profit-seeking by OpenAI contradicts the initial agreement made with Musk when the company was established.
According to the lawsuit, Altman and OpenAI’s co-founder, Greg Brockman, initially approached Musk to create an open-source, non-profit 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 foundational agreement.
Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from the board in 2018, has taken legal action against the organisation he helped establish. As of now, there has been no immediate response to Reuters’ requests for comments from OpenAI, Microsoft, or Elon Musk.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, rapidly became the world’s fastest-growing software application within six months of its launch in November 2022.
The success of ChatGPT prompted the emergence of competing chatbots from major players like Microsoft and Alphabet, as well as various startups that capitalised on the enthusiasm to secure substantial funding.
