Billionaire Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
He criticizes the creators of ChatGPT for abandoning the company's original mission.
According to documents filed Thursday with a court in San Francisco (California, United States), Elon Musk accuses OpenAI, which has joined forces with Microsoft, of having violated the initial agreement behind its development , according to which it should remain a non-profit organization, working for the good of humanity.
Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman in particular, with the status of a non-profit organization working on “open source” artificial intelligence software (accessible, modifiable, usable and redistributable by all), in order to not not let Google dominate this major technology.
He left in 2018 and is now one of the company's most vocal critics.
Elon Musk also founded his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, in 2023.
“Maximize profits” rather than “the good of humanity”
OpenAI did not make the GPT 4 code public, “breaking the initial contract,” Elon Musk’s lawyers argue in the complaint.
“Contrary to the Founding Agreement, Defendants chose to use GPT 4 not for the benefit of humanity, but as a proprietary technology to maximize the profits of the largest company in the world,” namely Microsoft .
Microsoft has promised 13 billion dollars (nearly 12 billion euros) in investments in OpenAI.
Sam Altman has since reoriented OpenAI on a lucrative trajectory, which caused him to be fired by part of the board of directors in November.
Supported by Microsoft, the boss of OpenAI was reinstated five days later.
Elon Musk is calling in particular for GPT 4 to be excluded from the license granted by OpenAI to Microsoft.