OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, has made counter-accusations against Elon Musk, in response to a lawsuit he filed.
Gatekeepers News reports that Musk is suing the company he helped found, alleging it has abandoned its original mission of helping humanity.
He alleged that it is focusing on generating profits for partners and major investors for Microsoft instead.
In its response, OpenAI said Mr Musk previously backed the idea of a for-profit structure and even suggested a merger with his car firm Tesla.
In a blog post on its website, OpenAI further claimed that Musk at one point wanted “absolute control” of the company, before eventually leaving it in 2018.
It added that it intends to move to dismiss claims in Musk’s recently filed lawsuit.
OpenAI also published a trove of Mr Musk’s emails to his fellow co-founders to dispute some of his claims.
BBC News has approached Mr Musk for comment. But he has already responded to the blog post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Change your name,” he wrote.
Musk in his lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court on Thursday 29 February, argued that OpenAI breached principles he agreed to when helping co-found the company in 2015.
Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in the AI firm since it established a for-profit arm in 2019, which allowed it to raise money.
His lawyers argued in court filings the firm had since become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world.”
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired – someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” OpenAI said in its blog.
It was written by fellow co-founders and executives including chief executive Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.
Musk’s lawsuit had targeted both Altman and Brockman, alongside the firm itself.
The blog goes into detail to dispute several claims made in the lawsuit.
It noted that in early 2018 the CEO of Tesla Motors had forwarded an email saying OpenAI should join up with his electric car company, Tesla, to use it as its “cash cow”.
The blog post added, “As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control.”
