Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has expanded his lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding OpenAI’s largest financial backer Microsoft as a defendant.
Musk’s amended lawsuit, filed on Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, California, said Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolise the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.
Like Musk’s original August complaint, it accused OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of violating contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI.
“Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a US$157-billion for-profit, market-paralysing gorgon — and in just eight years,” the complaint said. It seeks to void OpenAI’s licence with Microsoft and force them to divest “ill-gotten” gains.
OpenAI in a statement said the latest lawsuit “is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones”. Microsoft and lawyers for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk has a long-simmering opposition to OpenAI, a start-up he co-founded and that has since become the face of generative AI through billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.
The Trump factor
Musk has gained new prominence as a key force in US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Trump named Musk to a new role designed to cut government waste, after he donated millions of dollars to Trump’s Republican campaign.
The expanded lawsuit said OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements not to deal with the companies’ rivals. It said the companies’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger lacking regulatory approvals.
Read: Apple sits out OpenAI funding round as valuation hits $157-billion
In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage”. — Mike Scarcella, (c) 2024 Reuters
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