Elon Musk drops lawsuit against OpenAI

In an unforeseen turn of events, Elon Musk has instructed his legal team to request a California court to retract a lawsuit he had initiated against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. The litigation had originally been filed on the grounds that OpenAI, a company Musk had a hand in establishing, had strayed from its original purpose of advancing artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the greater good of humanity.

The legal documents, submitted by Musk’s attorneys, called for the termination of the legal proceedings that had been ongoing for several months. Interestingly, the request to dismiss the case was made without providing any explanation for this sudden change of heart.

This unexpected legal maneuver occurred just one day prior to the scheduled court session that was set to consider OpenAI’s motion to have the lawsuit dismissed. In light of these developments, BBC News has reached out to both Musk’s legal representative and OpenAI to seek their input on the matter.

The formal request for dismissal was filed “without prejudice,” which legally allows for the possibility that Musk could choose to revive the lawsuit at a future date if he so desires.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, originally brought the lawsuit against OpenAI towards the end of February of the current year. He contended that the organization, which he had been instrumental in founding back in 2015, had shifted its focus away from its noble, philanthropic objectives and had instead prioritized profit-making endeavors.

OpenAI has responded to the allegations by highlighting that Elon Musk himself had once been supportive of the organization adopting a for-profit model. They also pointed out that Musk had even proposed a merger between OpenAI and his own electric vehicle company, Tesla.

The dispute between Musk and OpenAI gained further momentum earlier in the week when Apple announced a new collaboration with OpenAI. This partnership aims to enhance Apple’s Siri voice assistant and its operating systems by integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot technology.

Following Apple’s announcement, Musk took to his social media platform, X (previously known as Twitter), to express his disapproval of the partnership. In a series of posts, he criticized the collaboration, cautioning that Apple might be unaware of the implications of sharing user data with OpenAI. Musk concluded one of his messages with a stark warning: “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”

Despite Musk’s critical remarks, the market reacted positively to the news of Apple’s partnership with OpenAI. Apple’s stock market valuation soared, reaching an all-time high of over $3 trillion.

In the midst of this controversy, Musk launched his own AI venture, named xAI, in July 2023. He described the mission of xAI as an endeavor to “understand reality.” Later, in November of the same year, xAI introduced its own chatbot named Grok, which was designed to compete with ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots. Grok was marketed as having “a little humour,” potentially differentiating it from its competitors in the AI chatbot space.