OpenAI Attempts to Dismiss Lawsuit Filed by Musk

OpenAI claims there is no evidence of the existence of the so-called "Founding Agreement." OpenAI states that Elon Musk's claim that the company violated its contractual commitment as an open-source, non-profit entity is "revisionist" and an attempt to promote his own competing AI company.

Tesla CEO Musk helped establish the company in 2015 and filed a lawsuit against the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, in March of this year, alleging that the Microsoft-backed company's shift towards profitability violated the original agreement.

OpenAI's lawyers stated in a court filing, "Years ago, plaintiff Elon Musk abandoned OpenAI after failing in an attempt to dominate the company. Now, he has founded a competitive AI company and seeks to exploit OpenAI's success and control its affairs for his own commercial benefit."

OpenAI's lawyers also denied Musk's allegation that the company promised not to commercialize its technology, stating that the billionaire owner of social media platform X did not provide any contract evidence to support his claims. According to documents filed with the San Francisco State Court, "Musk cannot bring a lawsuit based solely on an agreement that he cannot prove exists."

What claims did OpenAI make against Musk?

In objections and motions to dismiss filed on March 27, OpenAI argued that Musk's claim contains a crucial error, namely that the so-called "Founding Agreement" is "fictional." In short, such an agreement never existed, and Musk failed to prove the existence of any contract supporting his claims, whether written, verbal, or implied. The company added, "Musk cannot bring a lawsuit based solely on an agreement that he cannot prove exists."

An objection is a legal challenge questioning the sufficiency of the plaintiff's complaint. It essentially requires the court to determine that even if all the statements made by the plaintiff in the trial are proven true, these statements are still insufficient to constitute a basis for a favorable judgment for the plaintiff. This mechanism allows the court to dismiss cases that, according to the facts presented by the plaintiff, do not constitute a legitimate claim.

In addition to the objection, OpenAI also filed a motion to strike certain portions of Musk's complaint. These portions request the court to evaluate OpenAI's technological development and issue an "overly burdensome and impractical specific performance order" based on these evaluations. Specific performance is a legal remedy that compels a party to perform precisely according to the terms agreed upon in a contract.

Representing Musk, his lawyers previously stated, "Mr. Altman proposed to Mr. Musk that they jointly create a nonprofit AI lab that would strive to catch up with Google in the race for general AI, but it would be fundamentally different from Google."

In addition to Brockman, the lawsuit also mentions their agreement on the basic purpose of the new AI lab. According to this agreement, OpenAI "will be a nonprofit organization developing general AI for the benefit of humanity, rather than a for-profit company maximizing shareholder profit; at the same time, OpenAI will remain open-source and only weigh relevant security considerations, without keeping its technology secret for patent and commercial reasons."

A hearing on the objections and motions to dismiss is scheduled for April 24.