Elon Musk sues OpenAI

Elon Musk accuses OpenAI and its director

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI , the creator of the GBT Chat program , which he helped found in 2015, accusing its officials of “violating” its founding contract, according to Agence France-Presse. 

The owner of the "X" platform and one of the richest people in the world thanks to his companies "Tesla" and "SpaceX", he was among the founders of "OpenAI" in 2015, along with Sam Altman, the current general manager of the company. 

But Musk resigned from the company in 2018, and is now one of its most prominent critics. Last year, he founded his company specializing in artificial intelligence, XAI. 

In documents filed Thursday in a San Francisco court and seen by Agence France-Presse on Friday, the billionaire OpenAI and its director, Sam Altman, were accused of violating the company's founding contract. 

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization that aims to work for the good of humanity and uses “open source” artificial intelligence programs (available and capable of being modified, used, and redistributed). But contrary to these goals, the company did not publish the code for the latest version of its program, “GPT4,” in violation of the “founding contract,” according to what Musk’s lawyers confirmed in the lawsuit. 

They considered that the founding contract had become questionable, and accused OpenAI of turning into a profitable company, “with potentially catastrophic repercussions for humans.”

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit company and aims to work for the good of humanity (Reuters)

"A de facto subsidiary of Microsoft"

" OpenAI has become one of the most important companies since it launched the generative artificial intelligence program “ChatGBT” in late 2022. In recent years, Microsoft has invested about $13 billion in the startup, which has since redirected itself towards a profitable path.

 Musk's lawsuit noted that "the defendants chose - contrary to the founding contract - to use GPT4 not for the benefit of humans.

Musk specifically asked for GPT4 to be removed from the permit granted by OpenAI to Microsoft, in addition to receiving unspecified compensation. 

OpenAI's transformation played a role in the dismissal of its Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sam Altman, in November, but Altman, with the support of Microsoft, returned to his position in the company days later. OpenAI is also subject to regulatory oversight. 

The European Commission announced last January that it was checking “whether Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI should be subject to review.” 

Also, at the end of last January, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the launch of an investigation into the investments of “ Microsoft ”, “ Google ” and “ Amazon ” in the two main emerging companies, “OpenAI” and “Anthropic”. In the field of artificial intelligence. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Sam Altman's internal communications, as part of an investigation into the circumstances that led to his dismissal and subsequent return to the company in November.