Elon Musk boosts New Yorker’s Sam Altman pitch on X as trial begins

Elon Musk is WIRED has confirmed the promotion of a post on X promoting The New Yorker’s comprehensive investigation into Sam Altman’s alleged deceptive behavior. The move comes as Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman heads to a jury trial in a federal courtroom on Monday morning.

People who swiped X on Monday reported seeing an April 6 post from Ronan Farrow, a co-author of the New Yorker article, promoting the investigation. A pop-up on the post on the X mobile app shows that it has been boosted by @elonmusk, who also owns the platform. Boosting is a feature that allows X subscribers to pay an additional fee to amplify posts. WIRED was able to independently verify the pop-up.

Musk also reposted Farrow’s story on Monday from his account. “His description of Altman as a ‘fraud’ is accurate,” he wrote on X, referring to a line in the article about his nickname for the OpenAI leader. “This is very much worth reading.”

X and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. The New Yorker declined to comment. (Both WIRED and The New Yorker are owned by Condé Nast.)

Farrow’s promoted post did not come up with an “Ad” label in people’s feeds on Monday, but options such as “Report Ad” were shown to users who clicked on the list of post options. On an FAQ page for X’s Boost feature, the company says that “boosted posts must also identify themselves as an ad and comply with X’s advertising policies.”

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, company president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft accuses the maker of ChatGPT of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI and invested tens of millions of dollars in the nonprofit in its early days. He argues in court that his investment was not used as he intended. OpenAI has refuted this claim, arguing that Musk knew that OpenAI would eventually need to become a large company to achieve its goals. The trial began Monday with jury selection. Many potential jurors indicated that they are not fans of Musk or artificial intelligence in general.

Ziyi Yang contributed to this report.