In the newly filed deposition, Musk was questioned about a public letter he had signed in 2023, along with over 1,100 AI experts and others. (File photo)Elon Musk has criticised OpenAI’s safety claims and suggested that his AI company, xAI, is better at prioritising user safety than the ChatGPT maker.“Nobody has committed suicide because of Grok, but apparently they have because of ChatGPT,” Musk said during his deposition in his 2024 lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its original non-profit mission that he funded. The transcript of Musk’s video deposition, which took place in September 2025, was publicly released earlier this week, ahead of the case going to a jury trial in April this year.The incidents referenced by Musk in his deposition are related to the series of lawsuits against OpenAI alleging that ChatGPT’s manipulative conversation tactics led several users, including teenagers, to experience negative mental health effects and dying by suicide.Musk’s testimony indicates that these lawsuits could become a key part of the plaintiff’s argument in court. Based on what has already come to light, the high-stakes trial is likely to surface fresh and fascinating details about OpenAI’s early days as well as the circumstances surrounding CEO Sam Altman’s brief ouster and Microsoft’s complex relationship with OpenAI.In his deposition, Musk said that OpenAI’s commercial partnerships could compromise AI safety as they allegedly prioritise speed, scale, and revenue above user safety concerns.However, the billionaire CEO’s comments come at a time when xAI has faced safety concerns of its own. In January 2026, Musk’s social media platform X was flooded with non-consensual nude images generated by xAI’s Grok, some of which were said to be of minors. This has led the European Union and the California Attorney General’s office to open separate investigations into the Grok incident, with some governments taking stricter action by banning the AI chatbot.In the newly filed deposition, Musk was questioned about a public letter he had signed in 2023, along with over 1,100 AI experts and others, calling for a 6-month pause of the development of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, OpenAI’s flagship model at the time.Story continues below this adAlso Read | Elon Musk vs OpenAI: What newly unsealed court docs reveal and what they don’tMusk claimed he had signed the AI safety letter because “it seemed like a good idea,” not because he had just incorporated an AI company looking to compete with OpenAI. “I signed it, as many people did, to urge caution with AI development. I just wanted…AI safety to be prioritised,” he added.Responding to other questions asked during the deposition, Musk said that artificial general intelligence (AGI) “has a risk” and said that he “was mistaken” about his supposed $100 million donation to OpenAI after the plaintiff submitted an amended complaint in the case, which puts the actual figure closer to $44.8 million. © IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd