Elon Musk Boosts New Yorker’s Sam Altman Exposé on X as Trial Begins

Elon Musk is boosting a post on X promoting The New Yorker’s extensive investigation into Sam Altman’s allegedly deceptive behavior, WIRED has confirmed. The move comes just as Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman heads to a jury trial in a federal courtroom on Monday morning.

People scrolling X on Monday reported seeing an April 6 post from Ronan Farrow, a coauthor on the New Yorker article, promoting the investigation. A pop-up on the post on X’s mobile app says it was 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 window.

Musk also reposted Farrow’s story on Monday from his account. “Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate,” he wrote on X, referring to a line in the article about his nickname for the leader of OpenAI. “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.

The boosted Farrow post didn’t come with an “ad” label in people’s feeds on Monday, but users who clicked on a post options menu were shown choices such as “report ad.” On an FAQ page for X’s Boost feature, the company says that “boosted posts must also self-identify as an advertisement and comply with X’s ad policies.”

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, the company’s president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft accuses the ChatGPT-maker of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and invested tens of millions of dollars in the nonprofit in its early days. He is arguing in court that his investment was not used as he intended. OpenAI has rebutted this claim, arguing that Musk knew that OpenAI would eventually need to become a large business to achieve its goals. The trial kicked off on Monday with jury selection. Several potential jurors flagged that they were not a fan of Musk or AI more generally.

Zeyi Yang contributed to this report.