Elon Musk Has Unexpectedly Dropped His Case Against OpenAI

Unexpectedly, Elon Musk asked a Californian court to drop his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, the company’s CEO. Musk started the lawsuit, claiming OpenAI has abandoned its original goal of creating artificial intelligence (AI) for the good of humanity. Musk’s attorneys filed the request for the lawsuit to be dismissed, but they did not give any explanation for the abrupt change in course.
The withdrawal occurred one day prior to OpenAI’s application to have the lawsuit dismissed heard by the court. In the brief, it was urged that the lawsuit be dismissed “without prejudice,” giving Musk the opportunity to reopen it at a later time if he so desires. For comments on the development, BBC News has contacted OpenAI and Musk’s attorney.

A lawsuit was filed by the CEO of Tesla at the end of February. He alleged that OpenAI, a company he was instrumental in creating back in 2015, had diverged from its altruistic intentions and was now more interested in making money. OpenAI responded to this accusation with a reminder that Musk himself had earlier shown agreement with the idea of turning OpenAI into a profit-making entity— going to the extent of suggesting a merger between OpenAI and Tesla.

This week, the tensions between Musk and OpenAI flared up when Apple made known its collaboration with OpenAI on developing Siri using ChatGPT from OpenAI. In response to the announcement, Musk took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and made a series of posts criticizing the move. In one of his posts, Musk said: “Apple doesn’t even have insight into what happens when they pass control over your data to OpenAI — They’re betraying you.”

Despite Musk’s criticisms, the market reacted positively to the news, with Apple’s stock market value soaring to a record high above $3 trillion. Meanwhile, Musk has been pursuing his own AI ventures. In July 2023, he launched xAI, a company aiming to “understand reality.” In November, xAI introduced Grok, a chatbot designed to compete with ChatGPT, featuring a touch of humor.