Elon Musk withdraws lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman

Elon Musk has decided to drop his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, which he had initiated after claiming they deviated from their foundational mission of creating artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

The Tesla CEO filed for the dismissal a day after voicing public disapproval of OpenAI’s new collaboration with Apple. He had originally sued Altman in February, and the lawsuit was progressing through the courts in California.

And visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2024

“Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” he wrote on his social media platform X.

According to a court document reported by CNBC, the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice. There was an upcoming hearing on Wednesday in San Francisco where the judge was set to consider the defendant’s motion to dismiss the case. The request by the billionaire did not specify his reasons for withdrawing the suit.

Musk had accused OpenAI’s early team of intending to develop AGI “for the benefit of humanity.” Still, it claimed it had shifted toward a profit-driven model under significant influence from Microsoft, its main investor.

The lawsuit centered on Musk’s assertion that Altman and OpenAI violated the organization’s original commitment to improving humanity’s welfare. He argued that OpenAI’s transformation into a profit-focused entity that aligned with Microsoft and restricted public access to its technologies breached this commitment.

In addition, last year Musk launched his own AI company, xAI, seen as a competitor to OpenAI, which recently secured $6 billion in a Series B funding round. Legal experts had expressed doubts about the validity of some of Musk’s claims in the lawsuit, such as the assertion that OpenAI had developed AI comparable to human intelligence.

OpenAI had dismissed his accusations as “incoherent” and “frivolous”. In March, OpenAI released a blog post that displayed several of Musk’s early emails to the company, suggesting he recognized the need for substantial funding to support the development of AI models.

Featured image: Canva / U.S. Air Force / Trevor Cokley / TechCrunch

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