Elon Musk has intensified his legal and rhetorical offensive against OpenAI, using a newly released deposition to attack the company’s safety record and defend his own artificial intelligence venture, xAI.
In sworn testimony made public ahead of a jury trial set for the month of March, Musk claimed that xAI places greater emphasis on safety than OpenAI. “Nobody has committed suicide because of Grok, but apparently they have because of ChatGPT,” Musk said during questioning, referencing lawsuits alleging that OpenAI’s chatbot contributed to severe mental health deterioration in certain users.
The remark arose in a line of questioning about a March 2023 open letter Musk signed calling for a six-month pause on the development of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. The letter, endorsed by more than 1,100 signatories including AI researchers and technologists, warned that laboratories were locked in an “out-of-control race” to build increasingly powerful systems without adequate planning, oversight or risk management.
Since then, concerns about AI safety and psychological impact have moved from theoretical debate to active litigation. OpenAI is facing multiple lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT engaged users in manipulative or emotionally dependent exchanges that exacerbated mental health crises, with some cases involving suicide. Musk’s deposition suggests he may seek to incorporate these allegations into his broader case against the company.
The core of Musk’s lawsuit centers on OpenAI’s evolution from a nonprofit research entity into a capped-profit structure. He argues that the shift violated the spirit, if not the letter, of its founding principles and introduced commercial incentives that could subordinate safety to scale and revenue growth. In his testimony, Musk maintained that his support for the 2023 letter was motivated by genuine safety concerns rather than competitive positioning. “I signed it, as many people did, to urge caution with AI development,” he said. “I just wanted … AI safety to be prioritized.”
However, Musk’s safety claims arrive amid scrutiny of xAI’s own record. In recent weeks, his social media platform X was flooded with nonconsensual nude images generated by Grok, including material allegedly depicting minors. The controversy prompted an investigation by the California Attorney General’s office, while European regulators and other jurisdictions have launched parallel inquiries, with some imposing restrictions.
