OpenAI’s legal battles are not putting off customers—yet

Pity OpenAI’sGPTAIAIAIAIAI lawyers. On February 29th Elon Musk added yet another problem to their list by suing the maker of Chat, a wildly popular artificial-intelligence () chatbot, for breach of contract. The lawsuit argues that the startup was originally set up as a non-profit with the aim of building for the “benefit of humanity”, but has since established a profit-making subsidiary and accepted a large investment from Microsoft, a tech titan valued at $3trn, in exchange for exclusive access to its technology. According to Mr Musk, who was an early investor in Open and has since founded a rival, x, these actions benefit not humanity but “literally the largest company in the world”.Whether or not that argument has legal merit is unclear. On March 5th Open published emails in which Mr Musk apparently backs its plan to create a for-profit business. But the case adds to a long list of legal challenges facing the world’s hottest startup. Could these clip its wings?