Musk files for injunction to block OpenAI from transition to for-profit organisation

New Delhi: Tech billionaire Elon Musk has filed for a preliminary injunction against Sam Altman-run OpenAI for alleged anti-competitive behaviour.

The motion for an injunction accuses OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton of “various illicit activities and seeks to halt them,” according to reports.

The reports mentioned that the allegations include discouraging investors from backing OpenAI rivals like Musk’s own AI company, xAI and benefitting from “wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information” through OpenAI’s connections with Microsoft.

The allegations also include converting OpenAI’s governance structure to a for-profit and “transferring any material assets, including intellectual property owned, held, or controlled by OpenAI, Inc., its subsidiaries, or affiliates.”

“An injunction to preserve what is left of OpenAI’s nonprofit character, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy. If not, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will be long gone by the time the court reaches the merits,” read the motion.

OpenAI said in a statement that “Elon’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit.”

The AI company had earlier called the lawsuit “blusterous” and baseless.

In the motion for an injunction, Musk attorneys wrote that “Maintaining OpenAI’s charitable status pending final resolution and halting further self-dealing transactions by Altman protect both the organisation’s founding mission and the public interest in proper administration of charities”.

In his amended lawsuit against OpenAI, filed in a district court in California, Musk’s lawyers argued that OpenAI is “actively trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.”

The lawsuit further alleged that “never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralysing gorgon — and in just eight years”.

–IANS