Musk’s “World War III” threat in Twitter lawsuit haunts him at OpenAI trial

In his landmark trial against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk testified that he was deceived into funding the company , and argued he was trying to save OpenAI's mission to develop AI safely by restoring it to a nonprofit structure . However, when Musk's attorney invoked apocalyptic AI scenarios, the judge sternly noted that Musk's own xAI company operates in the same space and warned against discussing whether AI could damage humanity at trial . Musk is seeking approximately $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft .

Source: Ars Technica | 2026-05-04