A team of lawyers has filed an injunction against OpenAI on behalf of Elon Musk. Once again, the aim is to prevent the ChatGPT developer from working for profit. But one detail is revealing.
Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in February 2024. Claiming that the company had violated both its fiduciary obligation and its contract. Contrary to what was agreed with him as an investor. The ChatGPT developer had turned away from its non-profit orientation, according to the allegation.
Elon Musk expands lawsuits against OpenAI
Musk filed a second lawsuit in August with similar claims after the first one was dismissed in June. Only now the lawsuit was about twice as long – and the number of charges against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman tripled from five to 15
This lawsuit was expanded again in early November. But this is apparently far from the end of the legal dispute between Musk and OpenAI. Musk’s lawyers have now filed an injunction against OpenAI to prevent the company from operating for profit.
Profit orientation and investor access
As CNBC reports, in addition to Musk and his AI startup xAI, Shivon Zilis, a former member of the OpenAI board, is also behind the lawsuit. But if you look more closely, Musk is not only concerned with the non-profit orientation. Which is in danger of being lost after Microsoft’s billion-dollar entry.
The motion explicitly states that OpenAI should be prohibited from preventing investors from investing in competing companies such as xAI. This issue was also addressed in the above-mentioned expansion of the current lawsuit.
Elon Musk’s allegations against OpenAI
According to Musk’s legal team, OpenAI would encourage investors to agree to a kind of “group boycott” that “blocks xAI’s access to important investment capital.” Microsoft and OpenAI benefited from competitive information that was shared during the early years of generative AI development.
While Microsoft did not want to comment on the legal dispute, OpenAI appears to be taking the whole thing in its stride.