Elon Musk abruptly takes back lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman

Elon Musk claimed in the lawsuit that the company was breaching a commitment to creating artificial intelligence that benefits society.

Elon Musk dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. In the lawsuit, the Tesla owner had accused the AI form of betraying the startup's founding mission. Elon Musk had helped set up OpenAI in 2015 and claimed in the lawsuit that the company was breaching a commitment to creating artificial intelligence that benefits society when it became a for-profit enterprise backed by Microsoft.

Elon Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018, argued in his original complaint that OpenAI was always intended as a non-profit entity.

Elon Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018, argued in his original complaint that OpenAI was always intended as a non-profit entity but after recent changes, the ChatGPT maker was now effectively a subsidiary of Microsoft.

In the filing, Elon Musk stated, "To this day, OpenAI Inc's website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity’. In reality, however, OpenAI Inc has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft."

OpenAI released chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022 which can generate poems and essays and even succeed in exams. It also developed image and video generating tools and has been backed by Microsoft since 2019 which poured billions more into the firm last year.

Microsoft stepped in when OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman in November last year. The OpenAI board reversed the ousting as dissent soared in the company, reinstating Sam Altman and replacing several board members.

After leaving OpenAI, Elon Musk has launched his own AI firm xAI last year and said he wanted to raise $1 billion from investors.

Earlier, the billionaire also expressed anger with OpenAI, lashing out at its partnership with Apple. He said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), “Apple has no clue what's actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They're selling you down the river.”