OpenAI’s legal woes are piling up. Here are the toughest battles facing Sam Altman and ChatGPT.

• OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, face a growing number of lawsuits.
• Elon Musk, The NYTimes, and the parents of a boy who committed suicide are among those seeking damages.
• Business Insider breaks down the top legal challenges facing the maker of ChatGPT.

OpenAI is disrupting almost every industry in its path. But moving fast comes with costs.

In its journey to transform from an AI research lab to one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI — and its CEO, Sam Altman — faces significant legal challenges. Everything from OpenAI's transition to a for-profit business model to how it trains its large language models has been fodder for lawsuits.

These cases could cost Altman many millions of dollars, impact how all of AI trains its large language models, and potentially even alter how companies and partnerships are organized.

Some, like the two court battles waged against Altman by partner-turned-rival Elon Musk, have an added appeal: as sheer, popcorn-worthy Clash-of-the-Tech-Titans entertainment.

Here's the latest on the most significant cases. OpenAI did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The dispute over OpenAI's for-profit shift

The issue: Elon Musk sued Altman last year, accusing his onetime friend and OpenAI cofounder of betraying their original, 2015 nonprofit mission: to develop AI for the public's benefit, not for private gain.

Musk says he invested $38 million in that early mission only to see OpenAI enter into a multibillion-dollar exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft, creating what his lawsuit calls "a $157 billion, for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon." Musk added Microsoft as a defendant to the lawsuit this year.

Altman counters that OpenAI is still controlled by OpenAI's nonprofit arm. (Altman also says Musk himself tried to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit — under his exclusive control — back in 2017, before severing ties with the company. Musk denies that's the case.)

What's at stake: Musk is demanding a return of "wrongful gains" from the OpenAI and Microsoft partnership — plus damages — in an amount to be set by a jury and potentially in the many millions of dollars.

What's next: The case is currently mired in pretrial evidentiary battles and litigation surrounding motions to dismiss filed by both Altman and Microsoft. A Phase I trial, limited to Musk's claim that OpenAI was unlawfully converted into a for-profit, is set for a federal jury trial in March.

Musk's suit over 'poached' staffers

The issue: Last month, Musk sued Altman again, this time accusing OpenAI of stealing his trade secrets and luring staff at his rival startup, xAI.

OpenAI has "engaged in a deeply troubling pattern" of recruiting xAI employees to gain access to insider intel relating to Musk's flagship chatbot, Grok, the lawsuit says. OpenAI denies any such pattern.

What's at stake: The lawsuit seeks a jury verdict that would force OpenAI to halt its "anti-competitive practices" and return "any ill-gotten confidential information." A jury could also order Altman to pay cash penalties.

What's next: Musk said in his lawsuit that he may seek a preliminary ruling halting what he calls xAI's "unlawful" poaching of his employees and intellectual property.

The case has been assigned to US District Court Judge Rita F. Lin in San Francisco. She has set an initial case management hearing for January 8, 2026.

A groundbreaking copyright infringement lawsuit

The issue: In December 2023, The New York Times became the largest US news outlet to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of millions of copyrighted news articles in training its automated chatbots. The lawsuit argues that this has provided ChatGPT users with a backdoor to verbatim Times content.

Similar lawsuits were also filed by The Center for Investigative Reporting and a coalition of eight papers owned by Alden Global Capital — including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel.

OpenAI counters that it only scraped Times articles to train its chatbots, and that this is a fair use under copyright law. OpenAI further argues that it's rare for ChatGPT to serve up verbatim Times content — an error they are working to fix.

What's at stake: These news organizations seek unspecified cash damages and a jury verdict that permanently bars OpenAI from scraping their content.

If successful, the news organizations' lawsuit could result in a multimillion-dollar verdict and clearer guardrails for AI's future use of published content.

What's next: In April, these separate news organization cases were combined. Their next joint court date is in January in Manhattan, with evidentiary hearings set for February.

More copyright infringement claims

The issue: In April, the news organizations' complaints were combined with a series of lawsuits by major authors and creators who have also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Those plaintiffs include the comedian Sarah Silverman, the Authors Guild, and novelists George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and John Grisham.

What's at stake: As with the news publishers' suit, a verdict that could upend the future of AI development. These cases could also force AI companies to disclose closely held training information, although the extent to which that information would be made public is unclear.

What's next: In October, US District Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled against OpenAI's motion to dismiss the combined lawsuits, finding that ChatGPT's responses to user questions were sufficiently similar to the original works.

Stein also said the consolidated cases had shown "a prima facie claim of copyright infringement based on ChatGPT's outputs." The judge's ruling, however, did not address the question of fair use, which lawyers on both sides say will be the subject of considerable future debate.

The parties are scheduled to appear in court in January and further hash out discovery-related issues in February.

Wrongful deaths, mental breakdowns blamed on ChatGPT

The issue: The parents of Adam Raine sued OpenAI, Altman, 10 employees, and 10 investors in state court in California in August, blaming ChatGPT for their 16-year-old son's death by suicide.

The suit alleges that OpenAI's chatbot encouraged Adam to kill himself by detailing methods of suicide and discouraging him from seeking support from family members.

As of November, OpenAI has said it is rolling out age-verification features and working with mental health professionals to improve ChatGPT's responses when a user shows mental distress.

The stakes: In addition to financial restitution, Raine's parents are asking for significant changes to ChatGPT, including quarterly compliance audits by an independent monitor.

What's next: The Raine family's case is still in its early stages. In November, four similar wrongful death suits were filed against OpenAI in California state court.

As with the Raine case, the new suits concern OpenAI's GPT-4o, a now-outdated model that Altman has previously said acted "too sycophant-y" in its responses.

They were filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, which has filed a similar lawsuit against Character.AI, plus three additional lawsuits claiming ChatGPT contributed to plaintiffs' mental breakdowns.

A video trademark infringement case

The issue: Cameo, the company known for personalized celebrity videos, filed suit in federal court in California in October, accusing OpenAI of trademark infringement for naming one of the core features of its Sora app "cameo."

"We disagree that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word 'cameo,'" an OpenAI spokesperson said in a previous statement to Business Insider.

The stakes: OpenAI could have to change the name of the core feature of Sora, which is used as the basis for the app's AI-generated content. OpenAI has also expanded the feature beyond humans, covering pets and objects.

What's next: US District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted Cameo a temporary block on OpenAI using the term "cameo" through December 22. Days before the deadline, both sides are due in court to argue over whether Lee's order should be made permanent.