OpenAI countersues Elon Musk over ‘press assaults, malicious campaigns’ – Firstpost

OpenAI has launched a countersuit towards Elon Musk, accusing him of waging a “malicious” and sustained marketing campaign to undermine the corporate he helped discovered a decade in the past. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court docket in California, is the most recent twist in a high-stakes dispute over the way forward for one of many world’s most influential synthetic intelligence (AI) corporations.

In court docket paperwork filed on Wednesday, OpenAI alleged that Musk – who co-founded the corporate in 2015 however left earlier than it turned a family title – has used his social media platform X, authorized threats, and even a failed takeover try to disrupt its work and stall its transition to a for-profit mannequin.

The corporate has requested the decide to dam what it described as Musk’s “illegal and unfair” interference and to carry him accountable for “the injury he has already brought about.”

A billionaire feud over AI’s future

Musk, who went on to discovered his personal AI firm xAI in 2023, has been a vocal critic of OpenAI’s present course. He sued the corporate and its CEO Sam Altman final yr, accusing them of abandoning its unique nonprofit mission of creating AI “for the good thing about humanity”. As an alternative, he claimed, OpenAI had turn out to be overly centered on business acquire – a shift that Musk believes runs counter to the ethos upon which the corporate was constructed.

However OpenAI’s management sees Musk’s actions otherwise. In its countersuit, the corporate pointed to what it described as a sample of “harassing authorized claims”, “press assaults”, and a “sham bid” to accumulate its property. “By way of press assaults, malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk’s greater than 200 million followers on the social media platform he controls… Musk has tried each device accessible to hurt OpenAI,” the corporate wrote in its submitting.

These strikes, the agency says, are a part of a broader effort by Musk to both sluggish the corporate down or acquire management of its expertise for his personal enterprise pursuits.

The submitting referenced a $97.4 billion unsolicited takeover supply earlier this yr from a consortium led by Musk – a bid that OpenAI rejected. In response, Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, mentioned the board had failed in its obligation to significantly think about the supply. “It’s telling that having to pay honest market worth for OpenAI’s property allegedly ‘interferes’ with their enterprise plans,” Toberoff mentioned in an announcement.

Stakes rising in Silicon Valley’s AI arms race

The authorized wrangling comes as OpenAI races to finish its transition to a “capped-profit” mannequin – a construction designed to draw business funding whereas limiting the monetary return of shareholders. The transfer is essential for securing as much as $40 billion in new funding, a sum that may put OpenAI in pole place within the more and more expensive world AI race.

OpenAI has mentioned it should finalise its new construction by the top of 2025 to unlock the complete worth of its present fundraising spherical. Nevertheless it claims Musk is making an attempt to derail that course of, and it has now requested the court docket to stop any additional interference from him.

The countersuit provides a brand new layer of stress to a case already slated to go earlier than a jury subsequent spring.

Nevertheless, OpenAI posted a pointy rebuke on X, the platform Musk owns: “Elon’s nonstop actions towards us are simply bad-faith techniques to decelerate OpenAI and seize management of the main AI improvements for his private profit.”