Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, filing a new lawsuit in federal court just two months after withdrawing a previous one. The latest suit alleges that OpenAI breached its founding commitments by prioritizing commercial interests over the public good, and that the company’s actions constitute a violation of federal racketeering laws.
According to Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, the new filing is a more robust and forceful lawsuit than the previous one. “The previous suit lacked teeth, and I don’t believe in the tooth fairy,” Toberoff told The New York Times. “This is a much more serious and substantial lawsuit.”
The lawsuit claims that Altman and fellow OpenAI founder Greg Brockman knowingly misled Musk when the company was formed. Specifically, it alleges that they reneged on their promise to open-source OpenAI’s technology, instead granting Microsoft an exclusive license to it. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary and holds a 49 percent stake, which is currently under investigation by the FTC.
Musk’s lawsuit also seeks to determine whether OpenAI has achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI), a form of AI equivalent to a human brain. Altman has previously stated that AGI could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.” If the court determines that OpenAI has reached AGI, Musk’s lawsuit argues that the company’s contract with Microsoft should be declared null and void.
This is not the first time Musk has taken OpenAI to court. He filed an original suit in February, but withdrew it in June just one day before a judge was set to rule on OpenAI’s request to dismiss it. The reason for the withdrawal was not provided.
In response to the original suit, OpenAI claimed that it was “incoherent” and that the company’s goal was to serve the public good by creating AGI. However, the company acknowledged that it needed more resources than initially thought to achieve this goal, and that it had agreed with Musk to create a for-profit arm to accrue these resources. The parties ultimately disagreed on how to proceed, with Musk wanting full control or a merger with Tesla. Musk eventually left OpenAI and went on to start his own AI company, xAI.
