Elon Musk and Sam Altman engaged in a heated public exchange on the social media platform X, trading accusations over the safety of their respective companies' flagship products. The feud began on January 20, 2026, when Musk posted, "Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT," citing claims linking OpenAI's chatbot to nine user deaths since its 2022 release.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, swiftly defended ChatGPT, highlighting the challenge of balancing safety with utility for its nearly one billion users. "Almost a billion people use it, and some of them may be in very fragile mental states," Altman wrote, emphasizing the company's "huge responsibility" to protect vulnerable individuals while allowing others to benefit. He also pointed out the contradictory criticism OpenAI faces, being accused of being both too restrictive and too relaxed with its guardrails.
Altman then redirected the criticism toward Musk's ventures. He referenced his single experience riding in a car using Tesla's Autopilot, stating his first thought was that it was "far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released." Altman also alluded to issues with Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, which has faced regulatory probes in Europe, India, and Malaysia over AI-generated explicit images. "I won't even start on some of the Grok decisions," Altman remarked.
The exchange underscores ongoing legal battles for both companies. OpenAI faces at least eight wrongful-death lawsuits alleging ChatGPT contributed to suicides and mental health crises. In one 2024 case, parents of a 16-year-old boy sued, claiming their son became reliant on the chatbot before his death and that emergency safeguards failed. Tesla is also entangled in multiple wrongful-death lawsuits related to its Autopilot system. A notable 2019 case in Florida resulted in a jury finding Tesla 33% liable for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman, awarding $329 million in damages. Furthermore, a late-2025 Bloomberg report identified at least 15 US deaths over the past decade where occupants or rescuers could not open Tesla doors after crash-related fires, prompting the company to consider engineering changes to door release systems.
This public spat occurs against the backdrop of a protracted legal dispute between Musk and Altman. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, left the board in 2018 and later sued, alleging the company abandoned its original mission by shifting to a for-profit structure after his $38 million donation.
