It's not just Elon Musk: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI confronting a mountain of legal challenges

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After a year of basking in global fame, the San Francisco company OpenAI is now confronting a multitude of challenges that could threaten its position at the vanguard of artificial intelligence research

After a year of basking in global fame, the San Francisco company OpenAI is now confronting a multitude of challenges that could threaten its position at the vanguard of artificial intelligence research.

Some of its conflicts stem from decisions made well before the debut of ChatGPT, particularly its unusual shift from an idealistic nonprofit to a big business backed by billions of dollars in investments.

It's too early to tell if OpenAI and its attorneys will beat back a barrage of lawsuits from Elon Musk, The New York Times and bestselling novelists such as John Grisham, not to mention escalating scrutiny from government regulators, or if any of it will stick.

OpenAI isn't waiting for the court process to unfold before publicly defending itself against legal claims made by billionaire Elon Musk, an early funder of OpenAI who now alleges it has betrayed its founding nonprofit mission to benefit humanity as it pursued profits instead.

In its first response since the Tesla CEO sued last week, OpenAI vowed to get the claim thrown out and released emails from Musk that purport to show he supported making OpenAI a for-profit company and even suggested merging it with the electric vehicle maker.

Legal experts have expressed doubt about whether Musk's arguments, centered around an alleged breach of contract, will hold up in court. But it has already forced open the company's internal conflicts about its unusual governance structure, how “open” it should be about its research and how to pursue what's known as artificial