Elon Musk’s tort lawsuit against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI for alleged fraud (in soliciting his funds and help in starting a nonprofit only later to convert to a for-profit company in a bait-and-switch) may end up having collateral damage on OpenAI’s defense against the many copyright lawsuits in the MDL Litigation.
Already OpenAI has had to produce to the plaintiffs in the In re OpenAI Copyright Infringement Litigation the deposition transcript of Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI co-founder, from Musk’s lawsuit, as well as two memos Sutskever wrote and were discovered in the Musk suit.
And now the plaintiffs are seeking more: the diary of co-founder Greg Brockman discovered in the Musk lawsuit as well. That diary of Brockman contained the closest to “smoking gun” evidence that Judge Gonzalez-Rogers already ruled provided circumstantial evidence to support Musk’s claim of fraud, at least on one interpretation of the diary.
Fighting a War on Three Fronts: Musk v. Altman, xAI v. Apple and OpenAI, and Authors v. OpenAI
Who knows what else Brockman’s diary might contain that could be relevant to the copyright lawsuits against OpenAI. The plaintiffs are attempting to find out.
But that’s not all. In August 2025, Musk’s xAI sued OpenAI and Apple in a lawsuit filed in Forth Worth, Texas for the alleged anticompetitive integration of ChatGPT in the Apple iPhone. The lawsuit suit seeks billions in damages, including treble and punitive damages. (Judge Pittman denied OpenAI’s and Apple’s motion to dismiss but signaled the case might be more amenable to resolve later on summary judgment.)
Fighting a war on two fronts has never been considered wise. Fighting a war on three fronts is foolish. But OpenAI has no choice.
The irony of ironies is that Musk’s xAI and OpenAI are on the same side in the Carreyrou v. Anthropic copyright lawsuit filed by book authors. Adversity makes strange bedfellows.
The War of Words
Meanwhile Altman and Musk continue their war of words.
Excerpts:
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