In an unprecedented legal and media offensive, Elon Musk has escalated his attacks against OpenAI, accusing the company of abandoning its humanitarian mission in favor of pure corporate greed. However, between financial revelations and scandals surrounding his own AI, Grok, the xAI founder’s “white knight” strategy is facing its toughest test yet.
The legal offensive: A $134 billion battle
The tension in San Francisco has reached a breaking point.
Elon Musk has officially ramped up his lawsuit against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, seeking astronomical damages that could reach $134 billion. His core argument remains unchanged: OpenAI has committed a “historic betrayal” by pivoting from its non-profit roots to become, in his view, a de facto subsidiary of the Redmond giant.
For Musk, this commercial shift isn’t just a business dispute, it’s a global safety concern. He argues that the race for profit is forcing his competitor to bypass critical safety protocols, rendering models like ChatGPT potentially unstable and dangerous.
Shock rhetoric: ChatGPT in the crosshairs
Seeking to sway public opinion, the billionaire has taken his rhetoric to a radical new level by directly linking the use of ChatGPT to human tragedies. Musk has pointed to recent reports suggesting that interactions with OpenAI’s chatbot may have played a role in cases of extreme psychological distress, and even suicide.
By positioning his company, xAI, as a “safer” alternative, he is attempting to brand his own chatbot, Grok, as the industry’s only ethical safeguard. Furthermore, he maintains that his support for the 2023 AI moratorium was an act of “pure caution” rather than a calculated maneuver to buy xAI time to catch up.
Related: GPT-5: Why AI makes mistakes and how to spot them
The Double-Edged sword: The Grok scandal
However, Musk’s stance as a moral authority is being undermined by his own technical controversies. His crown jewel, xAI, is currently the subject of large-scale investigations in California and Europe.
The issue? Grok’s ability to generate non-consensual explicit imagery (deepfakes) through its unfiltered settings.
Regulatory authorities accuse xAI of deliberately loosening safety guardrails to attract users, creating a dangerous precedent that flatly contradicts its founder’s safety-first narrative.
Setting the record straight
Finally, the battle is being fought on the ground of historical accuracy. During recent legal depositions, Musk was forced to walk back his claims regarding his initial financial involvement in OpenAI. While he previously boasted of injecting $100 million to launch the foundation, he eventually admitted his actual contributions totaled approximately $44.8 million.
While still a significant sum, this correction chips away at his image as the organization’s primary moral architect. For OpenAI, this legal crusade is nothing more than a “harassment campaign” designed to boost xAI’s commercial interests at the expense of innovation.
As the trial looms, one question remains: Is Musk truly trying to save humanity from an out-of-control AI, or is he simply trying to seize control of a revolution that slipped through his fingers?
In the meantime, on our Free AI Online platform, we offer both AIs (GPT-5 and Grok-4) for free and with unlimited access!
Source: Techcrunch
