Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, and its CEO, Sam Altman, claiming that they have abandoned the startup's initial goal of creating artificial intelligence for the sake of humanity rather than for financial gain.

The billionaire's long-simmering hostility to the business he co-founded, which has now emerged as the face of generative AI in part because of Microsoft's billion-dollar backing, culminated in the lawsuit, which was filed late on Thursday in San Francisco.

Musk claimed a breach of contract, claiming that while Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman had first sought him to create an open-source, nonprofit organization, the 2015 venture is now primarily concerned with turning a profit.

Musk outlined how OpenAI was founded and claimed that the three men had decided to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is the idea that robots may do human-like activities in a way that would "benefit humanity," as stated in the complaint.

Additionally, OpenAI would compete with Google, which Musk felt was creating artificial intelligence for financial gain and posed serious hazards.

Rather, the complaint claimed that OpenAI "set the founding agreement aflame" in 2023 when it published GPT-4, its most potent language model, as basically a Microsoft product.

Musk has requested a court decision that would force OpenAI to provide its technology and research to the public and forbid the firm from utilizing its assets—including GPT-4—for Microsoft's or any other person's financial benefit. Requests for comment from Reuters were not answered by Musk, Microsoft, or OpenAI.