Elon Musk files lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, here’s why

In surprising turn of events, Tesla CEO Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of abandoning the company’s original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.

According to a Reuters report, the lawsuit filed late on Thursday Musk claimed that Altman and Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman had originally approached Musk to make an open source, non-profit company.

Musk's lawyers said that OpenAI's focus is more driven by profit, thus breaching their agreement. They added in the lawsuit that the AI company kept the design of GPT4 a ‘complete secret’, the Reuters report added. 

For those unaware, Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from its board in 2018. Within six months of its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI, became the fastest-growing software application in the world. 

Last year Altman was fired by OpenAI's former board which said it was trying to defend the company's mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. However, it wasn't long before Altman returned to the company with a new initial board.