Elon Musk has instigated legal proceedings against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and President Greg Brockman. The complaint, submitted to a federal court in Northern California, via the New York Times, claims that OpenAI has abandoned its pledge to remain open-source by granting an exclusive license to Microsoft. These models are now integrated into Microsoft's generative AI services such as Copilot.
Historical Context of the Dispute
This is not Musk's first legal move against OpenAI. In March Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company's President Gregory Brockman, CEO Sam Altman, and indirectly criticizes Microsoft's involvement with the firm.
In response OpenAI's co-founders Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba countered Musk's narrative, asserting that at one juncture, he aimed to amalgamate the entity with Tesla or assume complete dominance over it.
Later Musk withdrew the lawsuit ahead of a scheduled hearing on a motion to dismiss from OpenAI. Legal analysts had previously questioned the strength of Musk's case, noting that the contract central to the dispute lacked signatures from all parties involved. The lawsuit emphasized Musk's substantial early involvement in OpenAI.
Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that Microsoft invests heavily in. Alongside OpenAI, Microsoft has brought the org's GPT-4 to its service such as Office (Microsoft 365 Copilot), Bing (Bing Chat and Bing Image Creator), Microsoft Cloud (Azure OpenAI Service), CRM/ERP (Dynamics 365 Copilot), and programming (GitHub Copilot X).
Despite co-founding OpenAI, Musk has become a critic of the company and Microsoft's investment. He has said the outcome of OpenAI moving from a not-for-profit into a for-profit company is not what he intended. Musk has also said that the company is now a de facto division of Microsoft following Redmond's $10 billion investment into the firm.
Details of the New Allegations
Attorney Marc Toberoff, representing Musk, indicates that the new lawsuit accuses OpenAI of breaching US racketeering laws. Toberoff asserts that OpenAI participated in deceptive practices to mislead Musk. Additionally, he criticized the previous lawsuit for being ineffective.
The new action also challenges Microsoft's licensing rights, contingent on OpenAI's achievement of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The court has been asked to assess if OpenAI has reached AGI and whether the Microsoft agreement should be nullified consequently. The lawsuit further accuses Altman and Brockman of forsaking OpenAI's goal to advance AI for public benefit by forming a lucrative partnership with Microsoft.
Implications for AI Development
The resolution of this conflict could considerably influence future AI progress and the dynamics between major tech players like OpenAI and Microsoft. The case underscores prevailing frictions and divergent outlooks on AI technology's path forward and its commercialization. OpenAI has yet to provide an official response to the new lawsuit. Observers are keenly waiting on OpenAI's stance, as it could affect AI research's future direction.
