Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, a mere day before a judge was set to hear the defendants’ request for dismissal of the case.
Initially filed to the San Francisco Superior Court in late February, Musk’s lawsuit attempted to force OpenAI to stop operating as a for-profit entity, as well as release its AI research and technology to the public. This Tuesday he withdrew the case, offering no explanation as to why. The withdrawal was done without prejudice, meaning Musk could conceivably refile the lawsuit at a later date, though he’ll probably want to secure stronger evidence to support his claims before he does.
Musk’s lawsuit accused OpenAI of breach of contract, claiming that there was a “Founding Agreement” that its artificial general intelligence would be open source and the company would be run as a non-profit “for the benefit of humanity.”
Though Musk did not produce any physical signed document detailing such terms, the lawsuit attempted to argue that there was a general understanding between him, Altman, and Brockman as to how OpenAI would operate. Musk was a multi-million dollar investor in OpenAI and a previous member of its board of directors.
Unfortunately for Musk, absent an actual contract for OpenAI to allegedly breach, his lawsuit appeared largely based on vibes.
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In response to Musk’s allegations, OpenAI stated that no such founding agreement ever existed. The company also produced fairly damning emails which show Musk not only knew of its plans to become proprietary and for-profit, but actually agreed with them. In fact, Musk reportedly stated that OpenAI had no possibility for success unless it raised several billion dollars per annum — a funding conundrum he was willing to solve in exchange for complete control.
“As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control,” wrote OpenAI. “When he left [OpenAI] in late February 2018, he told our team he was supportive of us finding our own path to raising billions of dollars.”
OpenAI subsequently found funding elsewhere, eventually accepting a $10 billion investment from Microsoft, while Musk chose to funnel his cash into his own AI chatbot Grok. Judging by his lawsuit, it seems as though Musk hoped access to OpenAI’s research would give Grok a bit of a boost.
Though Musk has now decided to drop the lawsuit, his beef with OpenAI appears far from over. Earlier this week the billionaire took to Twitter/X to rage against its newly announced partnership with Apple, saying that integrating OpenAI into iOS is ”an unacceptable security violation.”
Neither Apple nor OpenAI have indicated any plans for such integration, and have in fact made it clear that each will be kept separate and walled off. That hasn’t stopped Musk from declaring that he’ll ban Apple devices at his companies if they do what he’s imagining.
