The neverending war between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

Elon Musk seems determined to resume his legal battle against OpenAI.

In a new complaint filed in a federal court in northern California, he accuses CEO and co-founder Sam Altman, as well as president Greg Brockman, of deception and manipulation.

Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT, refueling a six-year-old feud that began with a power struggle at the San Francisco start-up. https://t.co/5lUxCCPIQh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 5, 2024

Musk is reviving charges from a previous complaint against OpenAI executives, which he had withdrawn earlier in the year, while adding new allegations. In this latest lawsuit, he details how he was allegedly cheated out of millions of dollars, and accuses OpenAI executives of marketing the company’s technology without his knowledge, employing unfair strategies.

Musk claims to have been “duped” by Altman and Brockman into investing and founding millions of dollars in OpenAI under false pretenses, he says, and accuses the two men of manipulating him from the outset, pivoting towards a profit-driven model.

According to Musk the true mission of OpenAI has been subverted by prioritizing shareholder value over the public good. Musk claims that the new mission is an affront to the original purpose that led him to create OpenAI in the first place.

In an earlier lawsuit, Musk dropped his lawsuit after OpenAI published emails that seemed to weaken his accusations.

The emails revealed that Musk himself believed that the company needed to generate significant profits to support artificial intelligence ambitions, contradicting his current accusation that OpenAI was improperly profit-seeking.

OpenAI rejected Musk’s accusations, calling them “incoherent” and “frivolous”.