• Elon Musk has requested a California court to withdraw a legal case against OpenAI and its boss, Sam Altman.
• The case accuses OpenAI of abandoning its mission of developing AI for humanity’s benefit.
• Musk’s lawyers filed a request for the case to be dropped without providing a reason.

Unexpectedly, Elon Musk has asked a California court to withdraw a legal case against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman. The case accused them of abandoning the firm’s founding mission of developing artificial intelligence (AI) for humanity’s benefit.

The filing submitted by the multi-billionaire’s lawyers requested the dropping of the months-old case without providing any reason for the move. This request came just a day before the court was expected to hear the ChatGPT developer’s bid to have the case dismissed. BBC News has contacted Mr. Musk’s lawyer and OpenAI for comment.

The latest filing requested the dismissal of the case “without prejudice,” indicating that Mr. Musk could potentially reactivate it at a later stage. The Tesla boss initiated the lawsuit against OpenAI at the end of February this year, contending that the company he had helped found in 2015 had strayed from its altruistic goals to prioritize profit-making.

OpenAI countered by stating that Mr. Musk had previously supported the concept of a for-profit structure and had even proposed a merger with his electric car firm Tesla. The feud escalated earlier this week following Apple’s announcement of a partnership with OpenAI to enhance its Siri voice assistant and operating systems with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.

After the announcement, Mr. Musk posted several messages on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, criticizing the tie-up. One of the posts concluded: “Apple has no clue what’s going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”

However, investors appeared to welcome the news, as Apple’s stock market value surged to a record high above $3 trillion. Mr. Musk initiated his own AI company, called xAI, in July 2023, with the aim of “understanding reality.” In November of that year, xAI launched Grok, a chatbot with “a little humor,” to rival the likes of ChatGPT.

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