Billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman are at loggerheads again after claims linked OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, to multiple deaths.
“Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT,” the Tesla CEO wrote on X on Tuesday. He amplified a post alleging OpenAI's chatbot had caused nine deaths, including five suicides involving both teenagers and adults, since its release in 2022.
Hours later, OpenAI CEO Altman defended ChatGPT and criticised Musk's companies. Responding to Musk, Altman called the reported cases “tragic and complicated” and said OpenAI took user safety seriously.
“Almost a billion people use it, and some of them may be in very fragile mental states,” Altman wrote. “We will continue to do our best to get this right, and we feel a huge responsibility to do the best we can.” He added that OpenAI faces a difficult balance between protecting vulnerable users and ensuring its tools remain useful for the public.
Altman also called out Musk for previously criticising ChatGPT for being too restrictive. “Sometimes you complain about ChatGPT being too restrictive, and then in cases like this, you claim it's too relaxed,” he wrote.
The OpenAI chief then pointed to Tesla's Autopilot system, saying that “apparently more than 50 people have died from crashes related to Autopilot,” and said his experience riding in a car using the feature left him feeling unsafe. Altman also spoke on Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, saying he would “not even start on some of the Grok decisions.”
“You take ‘every accusation is a confession' so far,” Altman wrote.
A 2024 report linked Tesla's Autopilot to nearly 1,000 crashes, including over two dozen deaths, often involving drivers who treated it as fully autonomous. Musk defended the system, calling it a safety improvement, and announced that full self-driving would move to a subscription model.
Grok, Musk's AI chatbot, also faced severe backlash after users generated images of real people, including minors, in bikinis. X later said it would limit Grok's image-generation features.
Musk's comments followed a post he shared on Monday about a reported murder-suicide involving a man who had engaged in delusional conversations with ChatGPT. Musk called that case “diabolical” and said artificial intelligence should “not pander to delusions.”
Musk claims OpenAI defrauded him by converting into a for-profit venture, violating the principles on which it was established. In a federal court filing, Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft. He says his early contributions, around $38 million, roughly 60 per cent of OpenAI's seed funding, helped launch the company, recruit staff, and provide credibility, and that both OpenAI and Microsoft profited from his involvement. According to Musk, OpenAI gained $65.5-$109.4 billion, while Microsoft gained $13.3-$25.1 billion.
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab. Musk left the board in 2018.
