Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman

According to the complaint, Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman approached Musk for help with a non-profit company developing artificial intelligence that would “contribute to humanity.” Today, OpenAI is a for-profit company that receives billions of dollars in support from software giant Microsoft. The billionaire's lawyers say the company has therefore failed to fulfill its previous obligations to Musk.

“To date, OpenAI states that its charter ensures that generative AI brings benefits to all of humanity,” the complaint says. But according to Musk, this is no longer the case since the company does not share its knowledge openly and has become “in effect a subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, which has been around since 2015. He left the company's board in 2018. With the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, the company began a race among technology companies developing increasingly advanced applications for artificial intelligence (AI). ChatGPT is a form of so-called generative artificial intelligence, or technology that can write text or create video images based on large amounts of data.

Not only is OpenAI active with its free chatbot, but it also offers enterprise implementations of the underlying GPT model. Microsoft, among other companies, is eagerly exploiting this, but large banks, for example, are also experimenting with anti-fraud applications.

OpenAI's then-board unexpectedly fired Altman last year. With this remarkable action, which was quickly reversed, the board said it wanted to advance the company's mission to help protect humanity.

Musk and OpenAI have not yet responded to questions about the lawsuit.