Elon Musk is promoting a post on X promoting a long-form article by The Fresh Yorker investigation into Sam Altman’s allegedly fraudulent behavior, WIRED confirmed. The move comes as Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman goes to a jury trial in a federal courtroom on Monday morning.
X scrollers on Monday reported seeing an April 6 post by Ronan Farrow, co-author of a Fresh Yorker article promoting the investigation. A pop-up in the post on the X mobile app states that it was created by @elonmusk, which also owns the platform. Boosting is a feature that allows X subscribers to pay an additional fee to boost posts. WIRED was able to independently verify the pop-up.
On Monday, Musk reposted Farrow’s story from his account. “Calling him ‘fraud’ Altman is accurate,” he said wrote on Xreferring to a line in the article regarding his nickname for the leader of OpenAI. “Very worth reading.”
X and OpenAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. The Fresh Yorker declined to comment.
On Monday, Farrow’s improved post was not labeled “ad” in users’ feeds, but users who clicked on the post’s options menu were shown options such as “report ad.” On X’s Boost FAQ page, the company states that “supported posts must also identify as an ad and comply with X’s advertising policies.”
Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, CEO Greg Brockman and Microsoft accuses the creator of ChatGPT of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: to ensure that all of humanity benefits from artificial intelligence. Musk co-founded OpenAI and invested tens of millions of dollars in the nonprofit early on. He claims in court that his investment was not used for its intended purpose. OpenAI rejected this claim, arguing that Musk knew OpenAI would eventually have to become a gigantic company to achieve its goals. The trial began on Monday with jury selection. Several potential jurors said they were not fans of Musk or artificial intelligence more generally.
Zeyi Yang contributed to this report.