Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Tuesday filed to dismiss a lawsuit accusing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman of abandoning the startup’s original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit.
Musk’s lawyers have asked a California state court to throw out the lawsuit, originally filed in February, without explaining the reasons for the move, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
A Supreme Court judge was prepared to hear OpenAI’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
OpenAI and Musk’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk dismissed his case without prejudice, meaning he can refile it at another time.
The lawsuit was the culmination of Musk’s long-standing opposition to OpenAI, the startup he co-founded and which has since become the face of generative artificial intelligence thanks to billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft (NASDAQ:).
Last July, Musk founded his own artificial intelligence startup, xAI, which raised $6 billion in Series B funding in May and reached a market valuation of $24 billion.
The lawsuit says Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman approached Musk about creating a nonprofit open source company, but the startup, founded in 2015, is now focused on making money.
The lawsuit says OpenAI “set fire to the founding agreement” last year when it released its most powerful language model, GPT-4.
Musk in the lawsuit asked a judge to force OpenAI to make its research and technology available to the public and to prevent the startup from using its assets, including GPT-4, for the financial benefit of Microsoft and others.
OpenAI argued in a court filing that the lawsuit is based on incoherent allegations, calling it a contrived attempt by Musk to advance his own AI interests.
“Having seen OpenAI’s outstanding technological achievements, Musk now wants that success for himself,” OpenAI’s lawyers said.
Musk said in an April statement that OpenAI was trying to “make arguments based on disputed facts” that go beyond the scope of the lawsuit.