OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence company that ousted and then reinstated its high-profile CEO three months ago, faces a new drama: a lawsuit from Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world and a co-founder of the AI lab. Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in developing AI ahead of the public good. A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI developed with Microsoft, Musk said, represented an abandonment of a founding pledge to carefully develop AI and make the technology publicly available. "OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company, Microsoft," said the lawsuit filed Thursday in Superior Court in San Francisco.

OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has sued the company, his fellow co-founders, associated businesses and unidentified others. He claims that, by chasing profits, they're violating OpenAI's status as a non-profit and its foundational contractual agreements to develop AI "for the benefit of humanity." The suit alleges that OpenAI has become a "closed-source de facto subsidiary" of Microsoft, which has invested 13 billion and holds a 49 percent stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI tech to power generative AI tools such as Copilot. According to the filing, under OpenAI's current board, it is allegedly developing and refining an artificial general intelligence (AGI) "to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity. This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement."

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Sam Altman for allegedly abandoning OpenAI's original mission to develop artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft," Musk's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed late on Thursday in San Francisco. "Under its new board, it is not just developing but is refining an AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," claims the filing. "On information and belief, GPT-4 is an AGI algorithm." OpenAI, which counts Musk among its cofounders, has a unique corporate structure.