As OpenAI accused xAI of systematically destroying internal communications, the court also shut down xAI’s bid to add a high-ranking former OpenAI researcher to discovery. Here’s the latest on this increasingly messy lawsuit.
xAI repeatedly accused of going on disproportionate fishing expeditions
If you’ve been following xAI’s lawsuit accusing Apple and OpenAI of colluding to prevent LLM competition in the App Store, you probably know that it has very little to do with App Store rankings.
You probably also know that xAI has been repeatedly accused of conducting fishing expeditions and requesting disproportionate amounts of documents, many of which seem to have no relation to the complaint.
Just last January, South Korea rejected xAI’s request for documents from the Kakao super app, citing that the scope of the request was disproportionate and overly broad. One week later, the US court rejected xAI’s request to see source code from OpenAI, after concluding that “OpenAI’s source code is not relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims and is not within the scope of discovery”.
Now, the court has rejected yet another xAI request, this one involving Jan Leike, OpenAI’s ex-Head of Alignment, who left the company in 2024 for for Anthropic.
Musk’s company had asked the court to include Leike in the list of executives and ex-executives who would be compelled to provide documents for discovery, alleging that “he likely sent or received documents that are relevant to the claims or defenses in this action,” per the court’s description.
The court, however, denied xAI’s request this week, stating the following:
“The Court finds that appointment of Mr. Leike as a custodian of records in this case is not appropriate. Mr. Leike and any documents he emailed or received do not appear to be relevant or proportional to the needs of the case. To the extent that they were relevant, they would appear to be so only minimally, if they are relevant at all, given Mr. Leike’s lack of involvement in the Apple AI implementation and the timing of his departure from OpenAI.”
The decision came after OpenAI argued that “this request is a fishing expedition because it is unlikely Mr. Leike sent or received relevant documents as he worked on a separate project and was not involved in the
relevant Apple AI implementation.”
OpenAI says xAI is systematically deleting evidence
In other news related to the case, OpenAI is accusing xAI of directing employees to use “ephemeral messaging tools” that auto-delete texts and documents.
OpenAI is also accusing xAI of withholding documents, stating that Musk’s company has “not produced a single nonpublic document concerning the substance of their allegations or that OpenAI could use in its defense,” and that “plaintiffs have produced no emails, no text messages, no Signal messages, and no XChat messages of any kind.”
In legal cases such as this, all parties are compelled to hand over internal communications that may be relevant to either side, in a process called discovery. Failure to do so can lead to court sanctions, including penalties.
Just recently, Google was scolded by US District Judge James Donato towards the end of one of its legal rounds against Epic Games. At the time, Judge Donato criticized Google’s “deeply troubling” failure to preserve internal communications, saying he’d “never seen anything so egregious.” Google saw no sanctions or penalties beyond the scolding.
Back to the case at hand, here’s more from OpenAI’s accusation, as reported by Bloomberg:
“Communications about every aspect of xAI’s business, including matters highly relevant to this case, have been routed through these message-destruction tools, even as (xAI) knew they were planning to sue and were under a legal duty to preserve. (…) Destroying evidence was the whole point. And it leaves OpenAI and the other targets of Musk’s litigation at an inequitable disadvantage.”
So far, the court hasn’t ruled on the motion, and neither company has commented publicly on the allegations.
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