Elon Musk revives lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman

Billionaire accuses OpenAI co-founder of abandoning start-up's original mission to develop AI for benefit of humanity

Elon Musk alleges that once OpenAI's technology started to transform generative artificial intelligence, the mission changed from focusing on the public good to profit. AP

Tesla founder Elon Musk on Monday revived his lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman, arguing that the artificial intelligence company put profits ahead of the public good.

In the lawsuit, first reported by The New York Times, OpenAI co-founder Mr Musk alleges that once the company's technology started to transform generative AI, Mr Altman “flipped the narrative and proceeded to cash in”.

OpenAI has a licensing partnership with Microsoft, with the tech company investing billions of dollars into the AI start-up in exchange for use of its large language models for its computing services.

Mr Musk contends that OpenAI's language models are outside the scope of the company's partnership with Microsoft.

The lawsuit seeks a judicial decision rendering the company's licence to Microsoft null and void.

“We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired – someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

In June, Mr Musk withdrew a lawsuit against OpenAI and Mr Altman that had accused them of abandoning the start-up's original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit.

The new lawsuit is similar to the earlier one, which the Tesla founder withdrew from California state court with no clear reasoning provided,

“We are focused on advancing our mission and have a long way to go. As we continue to make our tools better and better, we are excited to deploy these systems so they empower every individual,” OpenAI said in its blog post in March.