OpenAI this week posted a blog post and a trove of internal emails on its website, directly responding to Elon Musk’s recent lawsuit. The documents, dated years earlier, aim to show that Musk was fully aware of and even endorsed the company’s pivot toward a for-profit structure and closed-source development.

In one of the most cited exchanges, Ilya Sutskever tells Musk that ‘as we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open,’ to which Musk replies ‘Yup.’ The company says Musk later pushed for merging OpenAI with Tesla or taking full control.

The response has generated intense debate. Many on Hacker News view the release as a calculated PR stunt rather than a good-faith defense. ‘This post is a lame PR stunt,’ wrote one user, arguing that it paints OpenAI as a ‘great benefactor and custodian of virtue’ while selectively using old emails to mock Musk. Another commenter called the release ‘very amateurish almost childish.’

Meanwhile, others see the move as a necessary corrective to Musk’s narrative. ‘They are defending their stance against Elon’s BS,’ one user countered. The dueling comments reflect a broader ambivalence about both parties’ trustworthiness — a sentiment summed up by one reader: ‘A bunch of rich people who are all full of shit pissing on each other.’