The billionaire Elon Musk submitted a motion for an injunction to a federal court in California over the weekend, seeking to prevent OpenAI, the company he co-founded, from transitioning into a for-profit enterprise. He listed four major criminal allegations against Microsoft and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI who is known as the 'father of ChatGPT', including monopolizing the current ai market.
Musk is a co-founder of OpenAI, having invested 44 million dollars in its development. OpenAI was initially established as a non-profit organization with the aim of researching and developing ai to benefit humanity, but Musk left OpenAI in 2018 due to differences in operational philosophy.
(Source: Court Listener)
His legal team filed a motion for an injunction against OpenAI, accusing Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft Vice President Dee Templeton of various illegal activities.
The four major offenses listed by Musk are:
1. Preventing investors from supporting OpenAI's competitors, such as xAI, which was founded by Musk;
2. Benefiting from competitively sensitive information obtained improperly through OpenAI's ties with Microsoft;
3. Transform the governance structure of OpenAI into a for-profit organization and transfer all tangible assets, including the intellectual property owned, held, or controlled by OpenAI and its subsidiaries or affiliates;
4. Cause OpenAI to conduct business with organizations that have significant economic interests in the defendant.
Musk's legal team warned that if the local court does not approve the injunction against OpenAI, irreversible harm will occur. The submitted documents state: "The plaintiffs and the public need to pause; preserving the remaining non-profit nature of OpenAI, and the prohibition on self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy. Without it, when the court makes a ruling, the commitments made by OpenAI to Musk and the public will have already vanished."
As early as February this year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman in the San Francisco Superior Court, accusing them of violating the non-profit agreement at the company's inception, and claiming that the company has become a closed-source subsidiary of microsoft focused on maximizing profits rather than developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) for human welfare. This lawsuit was withdrawn in July but was refiled by Musk in August.
According to legal documents shared by the community, a hearing regarding OpenAI's violation of antitrust behavior and unfair competition with microsoft is scheduled for January 7, 2025.
In response to Musk's latest legal action, an OpenAI spokesperson stated: "Musk's fourth attempt at the same baseless complaint remains completely unjustified. We previously attempted to dismiss Musk's lawsuit, stating that it is 'exaggerated' and unfounded."
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization and transitioned to a "limited profit" organization in 2019, with the non-profit organization becoming the managing entity of its profit-making subsidiary. The company is transitioning to a fully for-profit company, reportedly enabling OpenAI to retain its status as a non-profit organization as an independent entity.
Musk established xAI last year in response to OpenAI, and shortly after, the company released the Grok AI model, which currently supports many features of Musk's social media platform Twitter (now renamed X). xAI also offers an API that allows customers to integrate Grok into third-party applications, platforms, and services.
Microsoft first supported OpenAI at the beginning of 2019 and has strengthened their cooperation over the past few years, investing approximately 13 billion USD in exchange for 49% of the company's profits. Microsoft also allows OpenAI to fully utilize its cloud hardware resources, enabling this startup to train, fine-tune, and run AI models, just like the models supported by ChatGPT. #ChatGPT is trending all over the internet#
