It's not just Elon Musk: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI confronting a...
Saturday, June 08, 2024 After a year of basking in global fame, the San Francisco company OpenAI is now confronting a multitude of challenges that could threaten its position at the vanguard of artificial intelligence research. Some of its conflicts stem from decisions made well before the debut of ChatGPT, particularly its unusual shift from an idealistic nonprofit to a big business backed by billions of dollars in investments. It's too early to tell if OpenAI and its attorneys will beat back a barrage of lawsuits from Elon Musk, The New York Times and bestselling novelists such as John Grisham, not to mention escalating scrutiny from government regulators, or if any of it will stick.
Feud with Elon Musk
OpenAI isn't waiting for the court process to unfold before publicly defending itself against legal claims made by billionaire Elon Musk, an early funder of OpenAI who now alleges it has betrayed its founding nonprofit mission to benefit humanity as it pursued profits instead. In its first response since the Tesla CEO sued last week, OpenAI vowed to get the claim thrown out and released emails from Musk that purport to show he supported making OpenAI a for-profit company and even suggested merging it with the electric vehicle maker. Legal experts have expressed doubt about whether Musk's arguments, centered around an alleged breach of contract, will hold up in court.
Its own internal investigation
There's still a lot of mystery about what led OpenAI to abruptly fire its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in November, only to have him return days later with a new board that replaced the one that ousted him. OpenAI tapped the law firm WilmerHale to investigate what happened, but it's unclear how broad its scope will be and to what extent OpenAI will publicly release its findings. Among the big questions is what OpenAI meant in November when it said Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications" in a way that hindered the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.
Government scrutiny
OpenAI's close business ties to Microsoft have invited scrutiny from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI and switched on its vast computing power to help build the smaller company's AI models. The software giant has also secured exclusive rights to infuse much of the technology into Microsoft products.
Copyright lawsuits
Bestselling novelists, nonfiction authors, The New York Times and other media outlets have sued OpenAI over allegations that the company violated copyright laws in building the AI large language models that power ChatGPT. Several of the lawsuits also target Microsoft. OpenAI has argued that its practice of training AI models on huge troves of writings found on the internet is protected by the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.
