Judge rules Musk must face OpenAI’s claims of ‘years-long harassment campaign’

A federal judge has ruled that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk must face claims by OpenAI alleging that his public and legal attacks on the company amount to a “years-long harassment campaign.”

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday refused a request by Musk to brush aside allegations that he has weaponized legal claims, social media posts, and statements in the press to try to sabotage OpenAI’s success — all to gain advantage for his generative artificial intelligence startup, xAI, Bloomberg reported.

Gonzalez Rogers concluded that the counterclaim filed in April by the ChatGPT maker is legally sufficient to proceed. The judge also dismissed a few of Musk’s claims against OpenAI and Microsoft.

The ruling is the latest twist in a court fight that has played out since last year.

Musk’s feud with OpenAI dates back to his 2018 departure from its board; he is currently suing the Microsoft-backed (NASDAQ:MSFT) startup and CEO Sam Altman for straying from its founding mission.

Lawyers for Elon Musk had in June asked the court for a second time to dismiss a countersuit from OpenAI against him.

Musk on Monday threatened legal action against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), accusing it of antitrust violations over the App Store’s rankings of Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from his startup xAI.