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Elon Musk has filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, reviving a legal conflict that seemed to have been put to rest just weeks ago. The suit, filed on August 5, 2024, in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, alleges a "textbook tale of altruism versus greed" and accuses OpenAI's leadership of "perfidy and deceit...of Shakespearean proportions."
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, claims the company betrayed its original mission of developing open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for humanity's benefit. The lawsuit alleges that Altman and his associates manipulated Musk into co-founding the company, only to later "flip the narrative and proceed to cash in" once OpenAI's technology began to transform the AI landscape.
The billionaire entrepreneur seeks to nullify OpenAI's licensing agreement with Microsoft, arguing that the company's language models fall outside the scope of their partnership. This move could have significant implications for Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI.
Marc Toberoff, Musk's attorney, emphasized the differences between this lawsuit and the previous one withdrawn in June. He stated that the new complaint "holds defendants accountable for intentional misrepresentations to Musk and the public, and seeks the disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains on a grand scale."
OpenAI has vehemently denied these allegations, referring to their previous statements from March 2024. At that time, OpenAI executives, including Altman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, shared communications revealing Musk's past interest in merging OpenAI with Tesla and his desire for majority control.
The lawsuit comes amid growing tensions in the AI industry. Musk launched his own AI company, xAI, in 2023, positioning it as a rival to OpenAI. However, xAI's chatbot has faced criticism for spreading misinformation, with five U.S. secretaries of state recently demanding changes to address election-related falsehoods.
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