OpenAI Countersues Musk Over Alleged Harassment

Musk had sued OpenAI alleging anti-competitive conduct and violation of its charitable mission.

A photo shows a frame of a video generated by a new artificial intelligence tool, dubbed "Sora", unveiled by the company OpenAI, in Paris on Feb. 16, 2024. Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images

OpenAI is suing Elon Musk, accusing the tech billionaire of engaging in a harassment campaign against the artificial intelligence research company.

In November, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI to prevent the nonprofit from transitioning to a for-profit enterprise. The complaint argued that Musk co-founded OpenAI together with current CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and former lead scientist Ilya Sutskever, who is no longer with the company, following express commitments that the entity remain a nonprofit “dedicated to the development and broad distribution of open and safe AI for the public benefit, not concentrated for shareholder profit.”

Allowing OpenAI’s transformation “will seriously harm plaintiffs and the public at large,” Musk’s lawsuit said.

On April 9, OpenAI filed a countersuit against Musk at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division, asking that Musk be prohibited from pursuing his allegations.

It accused Musk of engaging in a “relentless” campaign against OpenAI through press attacks and “malicious campaigns” that have been broadcast to over 200 million people on his social platform, X. The lawsuit alleged that Musk filed “harassing legal claims” and made a “sham bid” for Open AI’s assets.

As OpenAI announced a possible restructuring, such efforts from Musk “have only intensified.”

OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a research lab, and Musk’s involvement with the entity was “short-lived,” the lawsuit said. Musk had pledged $1 billion in donations to OpenAI, but that commitment was “never satisfied—not even close,” the lawsuit stated.

“In 2017 and 2018, Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever refused to bow to Musk’s demands for control of the enterprise or, alternatively, its absorption into Musk’s electric car company, Tesla. So Musk quit, declaring that OpenAI would fail without him and that he would focus on AI development at Tesla.”

The lawsuit accused Musk of attempting to “take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor” for his benefit.

According to Musk’s lawsuit, Altman had promised him that the technology developed by the nonprofit would be owned by it so as to ensure that “safety remained the primary focus” of the venture.

Subsequently, Musk joined, “lending his name and credibility to help attract the talented AI scientists necessary to make OpenAI a success.”

According to Musk’s lawsuit, Altman and Brockman proposed converting OpenAI to a for-profit enterprise, following which Musk wrote to them in September 2017 that “either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a non-profit. I will no longer fund OpenAI until you have made a firm commitment to stay.”

OpenAI’s countersuit alleged that Musk “peddles the false claim” about OpenAI converting from a nonprofit entity into a for-profit enterprise.

The complaint clarified that OpenAI Inc. will remain a nonprofit while a for-profit entity under OpenAI Inc. is set to be transformed into a public benefit corporation, which is expected to place it in a better position to access capital and talent, the countersuit stated.

It alleged that “Musk seeks to prevent that restructuring—even though, years ago, he advised that a similar reorganization was needed to salvage OpenAI’s mission.”

Musk’s Lawsuit

In his lawsuit against OpenAI, Musk also accused the entity of engaging in anti-competitive conduct. The complaint said that OpenAI prohibited investors from funding the entity’s competitors, “specifically naming” the billionaire’s artificial intelligence company xAI.

“OpenAI and Microsoft together exploiting Musk’s donations so they can build a for-profit monopoly, one now specifically targeting xAI, is just too much,” states the lawsuit.

“OpenAI’s path from a nonprofit to for-profit behemoth is replete with per se anticompetitive practices, flagrant breaches of its charitable mission, and rampant self-dealing. Allowing this course of conduct to continue until final disposition will seriously harm plaintiffs and the public at large.”

Last month, a federal judge dismissed Musk’s request for a preliminary injunction barring OpenAI from engaging in various business activities.

The court found that plaintiffs in the case “have failed to meet their burden of proof for the extraordinary relief requested.” However, the court offered an expedited trial for the case “given the public interest at stake and potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI announced this month that it is planning to release a new “open-weight” language model, the first time it would do so since GPT-2 was released in 2019.

Open weight means the pre-trained parameters of the model are made publicly available. It is different from open source, in which all aspects of a model are made fully public.

The Epoch Times reached out to Musk for comment on the latest lawsuit.