These employees worked at OpenAI between 2018 and 2024, covering what they called “the organization’s formative years through its more recent development.”
San Francisco, April 11: A group of 12 former OpenAI employees has come forward to support Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit, is fighting to stop the company from turning into a for-profit business.
The former employees filed a legal document in a California district court on Friday, backing Musk’s claim that OpenAI must stick to its original non-profit mission.
These employees worked at OpenAI between 2018 and 2024, covering what they called “the organization’s formative years through its more recent development.” The legal brief was filed by well-known legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, who is representing the group in court.
Cases Against OpenAI in India
Indian book publishers, along with their international counterparts, have filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in New Delhi, as announced on Friday.
This lawsuit is part of a broader global effort to prevent the ChatGPT chatbot from accessing proprietary content. Numerous courts worldwide are currently handling claims from authors, news outlets, and musicians who allege that technology companies have used their copyrighted works to train AI services, and they seek the deletion of such content from training datasets.
The New Delhi-based Federation of Indian Publishers brought the case to the Delhi High Court, which is already considering a similar lawsuit against OpenAI. The case represents members of the federation, including major publishers like Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Cambridge University Press, and Pan Macmillan, as well as Indian firms Rupa Publications and S.Chand and Co.
Pranav Gupta, general secretary of the federation, stated in an interview about the lawsuit,
“Our ask from the court is that they should stop (OpenAI from) accessing our copyright content. In case they don’t want to do licensing with us, they should delete datasets used in AI training and explain how we will be compensated. This impacts creativity.”
OpenAI has not commented on the allegations or the lawsuit, which was filed in December but is being reported for the first time. The company consistently denied such claims, asserting that its AI systems utilize publicly available data under fair use.
Their aim is to support Musk’s argument that OpenAI should not abandon its original goal of building artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.” Musk believes OpenAI’s current leadership is allowing business and investor interests to take control, which goes against the company’s founding values.
The legal filing clearly states, “If the OpenAI Nonprofit agreed to a change in the OpenAI corporate structure which took away its controlling role, that would fundamentally violate its mission.”
In its suit, ANI alleged that OpenAI exploits its original content for commercial gain by using it to train ChatGPT’s large-language model. The newswire also claimed that the AI chatbot reproduces its original content in responses and has attributed false information to ANI, posing risks to its reputation and potentially causing public disorder.
The lawsuit, filed by Delhi-based Unum Law on behalf of ANI, claims that OpenAI has exploited ANI’s content for commercial purposes in two ways: by using it to train its large language models (LLMs) and by generating responses that reproduce ANI’s content verbatim.
The report further states that the suit alleges OpenAI has made statements and published news without proper attribution to ANI, arguing that such practices threaten ANI’s reputation and could lead to the spread of misinformation, potentially causing public disorder.
OpenAI faced legal challenges from various global entities, including a notable lawsuit from Elon Musk, the founder of Starlink, in a federal court in Oakland, California. Musk claims that OpenAI and its major financial backer, Microsoft, have unlawfully attempted to monopolize the generative AI market, marginalizing competitors.
In an 86-page court filing dated January 10, OpenAI stated it is legally required under U.S. law to retain its training data due to ongoing copyright disputes, including a high-profile case initiated by The New York Times. OpenAI emphasized it could not selectively remove ANI’s content without breaching U.S. legal requirements.
OpenAI further argued, “The company has no office or permanent establishment in India, and its servers are located outside the country,” reinforcing its position that Indian courts cannot enforce ANI’s demands.
OpenAI, now led by CEO Sam Altman, has been developing commercial AI tools, including the widely known ChatGPT chatbot, which became popular after launching in late 2022. Although a nonprofit parent body still technically controls OpenAI, the company is trying to restructure itself as a for-profit business — a move that Musk strongly opposes. Musk has even started his own AI company, xAI, and has become one of Altman’s main critics.
In February, a group led by Musk offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion, but the company rejected the offer. A few weeks later, OpenAI raised $40 billion in funding led by SoftBank, giving it a record-breaking valuation of $300 billion — the highest for any private tech firm so far.
OpenAI currently operates under a “capped-profit” model introduced in 2019, where profits for investors are limited. The original nonprofit organization still holds control over the company. However, under the new structure being planned, this nonprofit could be removed as the controlling authority. Also, some investors hold convertible notes that could soon turn into company shares.
The brief submitted by the former employees said this transformation would be a betrayal of the trust placed by everyone who supported OpenAI in its early days.
“In addition to abandoning its original mission,” the filing said, “the conversion to a for-profit company would breach the trust of employees, donors, and other stakeholders who joined and supported the organization” for its commitment to public good.
The former employees who signed the brief are Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard Ngo, Girish Sastry, William Saunders, Carrol Wainwright, and Jeffrey Wu. Some of them had already shared their experiences and concerns about OpenAI publicly in the past.
According to the filing, these former team members have a special stake in the lawsuit.
“The named parties also have a significant interest in this litigation as it addresses fundamental questions about OpenAI’s mission and organizational structure that they helped shape during their employment.”
In response to the legal brief, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC,
“Our Board has been very clear: our nonprofit isn’t going anywhere and our mission will remain the same.”
The spokesperson added, “We’re turning our existing for-profit arm into a Public Benefit Corporation — the same structure as other AI labs like Anthropic, where some of these former employees now work — and xAI.”
This case has been full of legal twists. Elon Musk first filed the lawsuit early last year, arguing that OpenAI had strayed from its core goal of benefiting humanity with its AI work. Last month, a federal court rejected Musk’s request to immediately stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company.
Adding to the drama, OpenAI recently filed a countersuit against Musk. In that lawsuit, the company said Musk has “tried every tool available to harm” OpenAI. It also asks the court to stop Musk from interfering in the company’s work and to award punitive damages against him for his actions.
