Sam Altman eager to have Elon Musk testify under oath

Sam Altman is thrilled about taking on Elon Musk in court.

"Really excited to get Elon under oath in a few months, Christmas in April!" the OpenAI CEO said in a Tuesday evening X (formerly Twitter) post.

He also shared a post from his chief security officer Jason Kwon, labelled as "concerning."

The post included screenshots from a court document by OpenAI's lawyers, noting that Musk preferred using messaging apps like Signal or XChat with settings to delete messages after a week or less.

Altman and Musk brought their longstanding public rivalry to a higher level in 2024. 

Musk, who is the head of Tesla and SpaceX, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman in February 2024, alleging Altman put its nonprofit mission at risk.

Musk stated he invested $38 million in OpenAI, believing it would stay a nonprofit. He was among the founders of the company, along with Altman and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, among others.

Despite efforts by OpenAI's attorneys to dismiss the case, a California judge announced at a January hearing that there was sufficient evidence for a trial, scheduled for April.

The billionaire pair have been exchanging insults on social media. Musk criticised OpenAI's ChatGPT on January 20, saying "Advise your loved ones against using ChatGPT." 

He was replying to an X post suggesting that the chatbot has been associated with several deaths since 2022.

Altman countered Musk's comment, criticising Tesla's Autopilot for being unsafe, and questioning xAI's Grok chatbot. 

Grok has faced governmental backlash in several nations following reports of Grok users uploading images of women and minors and instructing the chatbot to undress them.