Elon Musk Files Motion to Withdraw Lawsuit Against OpenAI

This comes just a day after Elon Musk threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies over ChatGPT’s integration to Apple’s operating system.
Elon Musk Files Motion to Withdraw Lawsuit Against OpenAI
X CEO Elon Musk during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in central England, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images)
Aldgra Fredly
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided to withdraw his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman following months of legal battle.

His lawyers filed a motion in a Superior Court of California on Tuesday seeking to dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice, though they did not provide any reasons for the decision, according to the court filing.
This comes just a day after Mr. Musk threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies if the iPhone maker proceeds with integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT at the operating system (OS) level.
In a series of posts on X, Mr. Musk called the move “an unacceptable security violation” and said that he will ban “all Apple devices” from his companies’ premises and require visitors to check their Apple devices at the door.

Mr. Musk, also CEO of SpaceX and the social media platform X, added that Apple “has no clue what’s actually going on” when they transfer users’ data to OpenAI.

The Tesla CEO co-founded OpenAI alongside Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman in 2015 but later departed from the company. In February, he sued OpenAI and its co-founders, accusing them of breaching their founding agreement to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.
“To this day, OpenAI Inc’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that [artificial general intelligence] ‘benefits all of humanity,’” the suit reads.

“In reality, however, OpenAI Inc has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” it added.

Mr. Musk requested that the court order OpenAI, which is now backed by Microsoft, to make its works “freely available to the public,” and prohibit anyone including Microsoft from making profit from its AI technology.

In response, OpenAI on March 5 published in a blog post what appeared to be excerpts from private emails from Mr. Musk, highlighting alleged hypocrisy arising from what he purportedly had envisioned for the company.

According to the emails, OpenAI needed more funding than originally planned, prompting Mr. Musk to encourage the startup to raise $1 billion instead of the initial $100 million. Mr. Musk also suggested that it “makes sense” for the company to “start being less open” over time and “not share” the company’s work with the public.

OpenAI also claimed that Mr. Musk wanted “majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO” in the for-profit venture, and that he withheld funding during these negotiations. Mr. Musk left OpenAI in February 2018.

Bill Pan contributed to this report.