Musk sues OpenAI for stealing charity, but he himself is stealing from OpenAI.

May 4th Court Hearing: A Self-Inflicted Bombshell, Illuminating the Entire AI Era.

Musk Sues OpenAI for Stealing Charity, But He Himself Is Stealing from OpenAI

AKASHA · 2026.05.05

May 4th, Oakland Federal Court, California. Second week of the Musk vs. Altman trial.

Musk dropped a bombshell in court—he admitted that xAI "to some extent" distilled OpenAI models, meaning: using the output of OpenAI models to train xAI's own models.

Musk dropped a bombshell in court—he admitted that xAI "to some extent" distilled OpenAI models, meaning: using the output of OpenAI models to train xAI's own models.

But his original purpose in coming here was to accuse Sam Altman of "stealing a charity"—of turning OpenAI, a non-profit organization that should have been "benefiting humanity," into a money-making machine valued at $852 billion. Under the guise of accusing others of "stealing," he himself was also "stealing." This isn't just Musk's embarrassment. It's the embarrassment of the entire AI era. I. There is no such thing as "innocence" in the AI ​​era. If you think only Musk is contradicting himself like this, look at this complete chain of accusations: OpenAI accuses others of theft. In early 2025, OpenAI publicly stated that there were "indications" that DeepSeek had distilled the GPT model. OpenAI is also sued for theft. In December 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in Manhattan federal court, accusing them of unauthorized use of millions of NYT articles to train GPT. Reddit and Anthropic have also been defendants. Musk is now suing Altman for "stealing from OpenAI, the charity." Musk himself has also stolen, but in the same trial, he admitted that xAI used the output of OpenAI models to train its own. From the model layer to the data layer, from bottom to top—everyone is suing others for stealing, everyone is being sued for stealing. FACT OF THE ERA There is no such thing as "innocence" in the AI ​​era. II. Why is "Mutual Theft" Still So Fast? Strangely, the entire industry is aware of the mutual theft and lawsuits, yet the models continue to improve and valuations continue to soar. OpenAI is worth $852 billion, Anthropic $900 billion, and xAI is also catching up. Why? Because the "property rights" of the AI ​​era are fundamentally different from those of the industrial era. Industrial era property rights are based on physical atoms. A piece of iron, a building, a machine—if you take it, I have nothing left. Patents and laws protect "exclusivity." AI era property rights are based on bits. A set of model weights, an inference output, a set of training data—can be copied infinitely many times without loss. "Exclusivity" simply doesn't exist physically. The "intellectual property law" of the industrial age was designed for finite media. But the carrier of the AI ​​era is bits—a bit doesn't disappear just because it's copied. It's not that everyone is shameless, it's that the rules can't keep up with physics. Third, the judgment can't solve bit copying. So, can the judgment in the Musk vs. Altman trial solve the problem? No. Even if Musk wins—will it change the fact that xAI also distills OpenAI? No. Even if Altman wins—will it change the fact that OpenAI was trained on NYT data? No. The law always chases technology, not defines it. The moment Napster was found guilty, MP3 copying was irreversible. The verdict could bankrupt Napster, but it couldn't make MP3 files disappear from 100 million PCs. Judgments are tools of the industrial age—they can only govern "things that can be exclusively possessed." The core substance of the AI ​​era is bits; bits cannot be exclusively possessed, so judgments are inherently ineffective. — THE NEW RULE — The next generation of rules isn't determined by judgment, but by agreements. IV. How the previous generation emerged. Every generation of media has fought the same copyright wars. In the end, the winner is never the lawyer, but the agreement. Music 2000s: Napster sued for bankruptcy → MP3 copying is irreversible → iTunes introduces a "$0.99 per song" subscription model → Spotify uses a streaming plus advertising revenue sharing model, making "pay-per-listen" automatic. Today, no one accuses Spotify of stealing music because copyright flow has been standardized. Video 2005s: YouTube was sued to the brink of bankruptcy → Introduced the Content ID protocol, automatically identifying copyrighted content and distributing advertising revenue to copyright holders. From then on, YouTube was both a "breeding ground for piracy" and the "largest payer of copyrights." Photos / Documents Creative Commons: Authors use a piece of license code to declare "Attribution for Commercial Use / Attribution for Non-Commercial Use / No Derivatives," making the license itself the operating rule for copyright—eliminating the need for litigation every time. Every answer is not "stricter laws"—it's about "legalizing the flow of copyright." This allows the flow of value between creators, users, and platforms to be completed automatically through agreements, no longer relying on litigation. V. AI: This generation is waiting for the "Spotify moment." The "Spotify moment" of the AI ​​era has not yet arrived. — OpenAI uses NYT data for training, paying NYT a licensing fee—negotiated by lawyers, with payment made each time. — xAI distills OpenAI output—no one pays because there's no protocol layer to ensure "distillation is detected and automatically settled." — DeepSeek distills ChatGPT—OpenAI can only verbally protest, unable to automatically trace the source. —What's needed? What's needed is a protocol layer—one that allows every inference, every data use, and every model distillation in the AI ​​era to be like every play on Spotify: automatically detected, automatically settled, and automatically traceable. This is where Hetu is betting—not on Musk, not on Altman, but on establishing a protocol that allows bits to flow for everyone. The next winner in the AI ​​era will be the one who establishes this "flow protocol" for everyone. Musk sued Altman for stealing charity, but he himself is stealing from OpenAI. Altman countersued Musk, using text message content as evidence, and also trained GPT using NYT data. No one is innocent, but everyone is running. This war won't end with a verdict. It will wait until the day when the "Spotify of the AI ​​era" appears.