The company is also dealing with copyright lawsuits from best-selling authors and media outlets who allege that OpenAI violated copyright laws in building its AI language models. OpenAI argues that its practice of training AI models on large amounts of internet writings is protected by the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law. The outcomes of these legal battles could significantly impact the future of OpenAI and its business operations.
Key takeaways:
- OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI research company, is facing multiple challenges including lawsuits from Elon Musk and the New York Times, an internal investigation, and scrutiny from government regulators.
- Elon Musk, an early funder of OpenAI, has sued the company alleging it has betrayed its founding nonprofit mission to benefit humanity as it pursued profits instead.
- OpenAI is also under internal investigation following the abrupt firing and subsequent return of its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, with questions raised about its governance structure and internal conflicts.
- The company's close business ties with Microsoft have invited scrutiny from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe, while it also faces copyright lawsuits from best-selling novelists, nonfiction authors, and media outlets over its AI large language models.