Musk’s Litigation-Led AI Strategy

It’s not obvious that filing lawsuits against your competitors is the way to succeed in artificial intelligence, if only because a lawsuit can take years to resolve and AI is evolving extremely rapidly. Nonetheless, litigation is the approach Elon Musk is taking to try to protect his startup, xAI, from bigger rivals. You might wonder if this is the same Elon Musk who reinvented the space industry and made electric vehicles hot? Hmmm.

Still, Musk is starting from behind in AI. And so, even as his wide-ranging lawsuit against OpenAI over the role of its charity shareholder winds through the courts, Musk today sued Apple for teaming up with OpenAI through the integration of ChatGPT in AI services on the iPhone. That move has “thwarted [xAI] in their abilities to innovate and improve the quality and competitiveness of their offerings,” the lawsuit alleges. But while the lawsuit over OpenAI’s charitable origins seems to have something to recommend it, the same can’t be said of the Apple lawsuit. It’s full of dubious assertions, starting with its opening line: “This is a tale of two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance.”