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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> If OpenAI ceased to exist, can Microsoft take the code, model weights, everything of ChatGPT 4, and just continue developing it and produce a new MS-ChatGPT based on it?

Well, if OpenAI magically got erased from existence, probably.

More realistic scenarios, like if they continued to exist, but there was a legal dispute about breach by Microsoft of the agreements by which Microsoft got access to the IP, may be more complicated.

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How much money and power would a gutted OpenAI have to devote to a protracted legal battle against Microsoft’s army of lawyers? It feels like robbing a man with cancer and hoping that they die before the case gets to the court, which feels very on brand with how Microsoft used to play things in early windows days.

> How much money and power would a gutted OpenAI have to devote to a protracted legal battle against Microsoft’s army of lawyers?

What happens when a “gutted" firm has assets whose value cannot be realized except by an actor with greater resources and time window, but those actors do, in fact, exist?

> assets whose value cannot be realized except by an actor with greater resources and time window

Somewhat disagree on this, since open sourcing their model and code would help a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

> Well, if OpenAI magically got erased from existence, probably.

I would not rule that out.

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