On September 12, Jay Edelson received what he expected to be a standard legal document. Edelson is a lawyer representing the parents of Adam Raine; they are suing OpenAI, alleging that their 16-year-old son took his life at the encouragement of ChatGPT. OpenAI\u2019s lawyers had some inquiries for the opposing counsel, which is normal. For instance, they requested information about therapy Raine may have received, and Edelson complied.<\/p>\n
But some of the asks began to feel invasive, he told me. OpenAI wanted the family to send any videos taken at memorial services for Raine, according to documents I have reviewed. It wanted a list of people who attended or were invited to any memorial services. And it wanted the names of anyone who had cared for or supervised Raine over the past five years, including friends, teachers, school-bus drivers, coaches, and \u201ccar pool divers [sic].\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing after grieving parents, it is despicable,\u201d Edelson told me, and he objected to the requests. OpenAI did not respond to multiple inquiries from me about discovery in the Raine case, nor did Mayer Brown, the law firm representing the company. (OpenAI has announced<\/a> that it would work on a number of algorithmic and design changes, including the addition of new parental controls, following the Raine lawsuit.) According to Edelson, OpenAI also has not provided any documents in response to his own discovery requests in preparation for trial.<\/p>\n Companies play hardball in legal disputes all the time. But until recently, OpenAI didn\u2019t seem to be taking that approach. Many lawsuits have been filed against the firm\u2014in particular by publishers and authors alleging that OpenAI infringed on their intellectual-property rights by training ChatGPT on their books and articles without permission\u2014but OpenAI has appeared to stick to legal arguments and attempted to strike a somewhat conciliatory posture\u2014while also\u00a0 entering licensing partnerships with a number of other media organizations, including The Atlantic<\/a>, presumably as a way to avoid further lawsuits.<\/p>\n Now, however, OpenAI is going on the offensive. Gone are the days of a nonprofit research lab publicly sharing its top AI model\u2019s code, unsure<\/a> that it would ever have a product or revenue. Today, ChatGPT and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are the faces of potentially historic technological upheaval, and OpenAI is worth $500 billion, making it the most valuable private company in the world. Altman and other company executives have used aggressive social-media posts and interviews to rebuke<\/a> critics<\/a> and antagonize<\/a> competitors<\/a>; over the summer, at a live New York Times event, Altman interrupted to ask, \u201cAre you going to talk about where you sue us because you don\u2019t like user privacy?\u201d (The Times is suing OpenAI over copyright infringement, which OpenAI denies.) Recently, Altman bristled<\/a> at questions from the investor Brad Gerstner over how OpenAI will meet its $1.4 trillion spending commitments, given its far smaller annual revenues: \u201cIf you want to sell your shares, I\u2019ll find you a buyer. I just\u2014enough.\u201d<\/p>\n As it continues to grow, OpenAI will almost certainly be sued many more times. At the end of last week, seven new lawsuits<\/a> were filed against the company in California, all of them alleging that ChatGPT pushed someone toward suicide or severe psychological distress.<\/p>\n Situations like Edelson\u2019s have been playing out in another of OpenAI\u2019s high-profile legal entanglements. In August, Nathan Calvin opened his door to a sheriff\u2019s deputy, who had come to serve a subpoena from OpenAI. Calvin is general counsel at Encode, an AI-policy nonprofit with three full-time employees. Encode has been critical of OpenAI, joining a coalition of other organizations rallying against the start-up\u2019s attempt to restructure from nonprofit governance into a more traditional for-profit business, which they fear would come at the expense of AI safety<\/a>.<\/p>\n In December, Encode filed a brief in support of part of a lawsuit by Elon Musk, in which he asked the court to block OpenAI\u2019s restructure (his request was denied). The subpoena sought documents and communications that would show if Encode had received funding or otherwise coordinated with Musk, which Calvin denied. But as with the legal requests of the Raine family, this one asked Encode to produce information about far-flung topics, including documents that Encode might have had about potential changes to OpenAI\u2019s structure and a major California AI regulation that Encode co-sponsored.<\/p>\n Over the past several months, OpenAI has subpoenaed<\/a> at least seven nonprofit organizations in relation to Musk\u2019s lawsuit, typically asking for any ties to Musk in addition to a broader set of queries. The other six have not submitted briefs in the Musk litigation. Beyond the encumbrance\u2014paying lawyers is expensive, and producing documents is very time-consuming\u2014some of the targeted groups have said the subpoenas have already had a punishing effect. Tyler Johnston, the founder and one of two employees at the Midas Project, a small AI-industry watchdog, told me he has been trying to get an insurance policy that would protect Midas in the event that it\u2019s sued over media it publishes\u2014a standard practice\u2014but every insurer has turned him down. Multiple insurance companies pointed to the OpenAI subpoena as the reason, according to Johnston. Being subpoenaed \u201cmakes people less likely to want to talk with you during a really critical period,\u201d Calvin said\u2014the late stages of getting that AI regulation passed\u2014\u201cand does create just some sense of, \u2018Oh, maybe you have done something wrong.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In response to an inquiry about its subpoenas related to the Musk litigation, an OpenAI spokesperson pointed me to a series<\/a> of social-media posts by Jason Kwon, the firm\u2019s chief strategy officer. Kwon wrote that the subpoenas were a standard part of the legal process, and he\u2019s right. \u201cTo target nonprofits is really oppressive, but I can\u2019t say that it\u2019s so unusual,\u201d David Zarfes, a University of Chicago law professor who is not involved with the litigation between OpenAI and Musk, told me. Indeed, \u201cbroad\u201d and even \u201caggressive\u201d discovery requests are<\/a> advised<\/a> by<\/a> law firms that represent corporations.<\/p>\n Kwon also wrote that OpenAI had \u201ctransparency questions\u201d about the funding and control of several organizations that launched or joined campaigns critical of OpenAI shortly after Musk sued. It is true that Musk is an external adviser and has donated to at least one of the subpoenaed groups, the Future of Life Institute, and FLI has itself given money to Encode. But FLI has not received any funding from Musk since 2021, according to a spokesperson. Some of the subpoenaed nonprofits, including FLI, Ek\u014d, and Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology, have also been publicly critical of Musk and xAI for, among other things, neglecting or abandoning their commitments to AI safety.<\/p>\n Whatever the motivations, this legal strategy represents the new normal for OpenAI: an outwardly aggressive approach. OpenAI\u2019s determination to shift from the nonprofit model was apparently motivated in part by the desire to fundraise. The Japanese investment group SoftBank, for instance, had conditioned $22.5 billion on OpenAI making such a change. (OpenAI completed<\/a> its transition to a more traditional for-profit model last week. The actual structure is a bit more complicated than it initially seemed, and a nonprofit board still technically retains control of the business side. But nothing about OpenAI\u2019s recent actions or the board\u2019s makeup\u2014Altman is himself a member<\/a>\u2014suggests any changes to the company\u2019s commercial ambitions.)<\/p>\n And over the past year, the company has morphed into today\u2019s version of the famous 1904 political cartoon<\/a> depicting Standard Oil as an octopus wrapping its tentacles around the globe. OpenAI has launched or revealed plans for a social-media app<\/a>, a web browser<\/a>, shopping<\/a> inside ChatGPT, a personal device<\/a>. There is the commercial<\/a> showing ChatGPT suggesting a recipe for a date night; Altman\u2019s appearances on Theo Von\u2019s<\/a> and Tucker Carlson\u2019s<\/a> podcasts; all of the lobbying documents and influence OpenAI appears to have had on Donald Trump\u2019s AI policy<\/a>. Building artificial general intelligence that \u201cbenefits all of humanity\u201d\u2014the company\u2019s original mission\u2014seems less the focus than the inverse: shaping human civilization and the planet to the benefit of building AGI.<\/p>\n