Elon Musk is Suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman Again

Elon Musk seems to not be done with OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman as he reopened the lawsuit against the AI startup just over a month after initially withdrawing it, Ars Technica reported.

In a new lawsuit filed in a California District Court on Monday, Musk accused Altman and his co-conspirators of taking advantage of Musk's "humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence."

The Tesla CEO claimed that his fellow co-founders intended to "betray" these promises from the start through "sham altruism" and the idea that OpenAI was a non-profit firm.

The new lawsuit hinged on the company's recent plans to launch its own AI-powered search engine to compete with Google Search, a proposition Musk sees as a violation of his initial agreement with Altman to fund OpenAI.

Musk stopped pouring investments into AI startups in 2018 after accusing the CEO of recasting a non-profit organization into a "moneymaking endeavor to bring in shareholders, sell equity, and raise capital."

Elon Musk Pushes to Void Microsoft GPT-4 Deal with OpenAI

Different from his first lawsuit, Musk is now seeking to void OpenAI's exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft.

The tech billionaire claimed the tech giant has an "enormous financial interest" in OpenAI's product, making it impossible to determine if Microsoft is powering OpenAI's "for-profit apparatus" left to "operate fully unchecked."

To null the agreement, Musk is urging the court to determine whether OpenAI's current GPT-4 models can already be considered as Artificial General Intelligence, essentially putting Microsoft under regulatory scrutiny for potential market manipulation.

Microsoft stepped up to replace Musk as the company's biggest investor in 2019 in exchange for powering its latest AI models and cloud-powered platforms.

The tech giant later stepped down from its board position in the company amid global regulatory scrutiny for its major AI deals.

Elon Musk Poses to Lead AI Race

It is worth noting that Microsoft is not the only party interested in taking hold of the OpenAI brand while it is at its peak of popularity.

During the first filing of the lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman claimed Musk is only suing the company to merge it with Tesla.

Musk, at the time, was reportedly acquiring more data center tools to build his supercomputer, touted to power his long-planned robotaxi venture for Tesla.

Similar trends can be seen in other Musk-owned companies with the recent development ramp-ups to produce chatbots and generative AI tools seen to compete with other tech giants.