Elon Musk Promotes New Yorker’s Sam Altman Exposé on X as Trials Begin

Elon Musk is add post on X promoting more of the New Yorker search to It’s Sam Altman the alleged fraud, WIRED has confirmed. The move comes as Musk lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman will appear in court Monday morning.

People scrolling through X on Monday reported seeing an April 6 blog post from Ronan Farrow, a New Yorker columnist, promoting the investigation. The post’s appearance on the X mobile app is said to have been inspired by @elonmusk, who also owns the platform. Boosting is a feature that allows X subscribers to pay extra to boost posts. WIRED has been able to confirm the pop-up window.

Musk retweeted Farrow’s story on Monday from his account. “Calling Altman a “Scam” is correct,” he wrote on Xreferring to the line in the article about his name as the leader of OpenAI. “This is a very important read.”

X and OpenAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request. The New Yorker declined to comment. (WIRED and The New Yorker are both owned by Condé Nast.)

Farrow’s promoted post didn’t come up with “ads” in people’s feeds on Monday, but users who clicked on the post’s options were shown options like “report ads.” On the FAQ page for X’s Boost feature, the company says that “promoted content must also identify itself as an ad and adhere to X’s policies.”

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, the company’s president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft accuses the creator of ChatGPT of deviating from its non-profit founding mission: to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all people. Musk was the founder of the OpenAI partnership and invested millions of dollars in the nonprofit in its early days. He is arguing in court that his money was not used as he wanted. OpenAI has disputed this, saying that Musk knew that OpenAI would eventually need to become a large business to achieve its goals. The trial began on Monday with jury selection. Several judges indicated that they were not fans of Musk or AI in general.

Zeyi Yang contributed to this report.