ChatGPT developer OpenAI has come out swinging against Elon Musk’s recent lawsuit, labeling the legal action as a “frivolous” and “incoherent” attempt to gain access to the company’s proprietary technology.
Fortune reports that in a fiery legal response, OpenAI has launched a scathing attack on Elon Musk’s recent lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company, accusing the billionaire entrepreneur of concocting a fictitious narrative to lay claim to the fruits of an enterprise he abandoned. The strongly worded filing in California’s Superior Court in San Francisco paints Musk as a “jilted backer-turned-competitor” seeking to capitalize on OpenAI’s success for his own commercial gain.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Elon Musk strikes a pose (Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images)
At the center of the dispute is Musk’s claim that OpenAI violated a “Founding Agreement” by privatizing the development of GPT-4, which he frames as the world’s first artificial general intelligence. Musk asserts that the company should have continued to publish its research for the benefit of humanity, as per its original nonprofit status. However, OpenAI has vehemently refuted these allegations, asserting that the “Founding Agreement” is a mere “fiction Musk has conjured” to lay an “unearned claim” on the company’s achievements.
OpenAI’s legal team has painted a damning picture of Musk’s motivations, suggesting that the lawsuit is a thinly veiled attempt to gain access to the company’s proprietary technology through the discovery process. “Were this case to proceed to discovery, the evidence would show that Musk supported a for-profit structure for OpenAI, to be controlled by Musk himself, and dropped the project when his wishes were not followed,” the filing states. “Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself.”
The company has also warned that if Musk refuses to drop the lawsuit before the discovery phase, more embarrassing documents could come to light, alluding to the potential release of damaging emails that contradict Musk’s claimed stance on OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model.
Vinod Khosla, an early OpenAI investor and well-known venture capitalist, has echoed the sentiment, labeling the lawsuit as a case of “sour grapes” on Musk’s behalf, suggesting that the billionaire is resorting to litigation out of an inability to innovate.
Read more at Fortune here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
