Musk drops case against OpenAI – reports

The withdrawal comes amid a rift between the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and the creator of ChatGPT

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unexpectedly dropped a legal case against OpenAI, shortly after he criticized the ChatGPT owner's recently announced partnership with Apple.

Attorneys for Musk asked the California state court to dismiss the lawsuit against the artificial intelligence (AI) research firm without giving a reason for the move, Reuters has reported, citing a filing in San Francisco Superior Court.

The Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) boss filed the case against OpenAI in February, arguing that the company, which he had helped establish in 2015, had abandoned its founding mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has since become the face of generative AI thanks to investment from Microsoft.

Musk dropped the case just a day before the court was expected to hear OpenAI’s bid to have it dismissed. The firm described Musk’s lawsuit as a contrived attempt by the tech billionaire to advance his own AI interests, Reuters said, citing court filings.

Musk founded his own artificial intelligence startup last year. Called xAI, it announced in May that it had raised $6 billion in funding that would help bring its “first products to market”. xAI has so far launched a generative artificial intelligence chatbot dubbed Grok as a rival to ChatGPT. Grok is available via X. 

Earlier this week, OpenAI and iPhone maker Apple unveiled a partnership to boost Siri voice assistant with ChatGPT. The announcement triggered criticism from Musk, who warned that the tie-up would result in an “unacceptable security violation.”

READ MORE: Musk threatens to ban iPhones

In a post on X, the mogul threatened to ban staff at his companies from using Apple devices if the iPhone maker integrates OpenAI’s artificial intelligence software into its operating systems.