- Ann Altman is asking for $150,000 in damages, alleging her brother Sam repeatedly abused her over the course of roughly nine years. Her immediate family issued a statement denying the claims completely and alleging instead the 30-year-old is suffering from mental health problems.
Sam Altman, the billionaire CEO behind ChatGPT creator OpenAI, is facing a bombshell lawsuit over incendiary allegations he sexually abused his younger sister over the course of nearly a decade.
While the claims made by Ann Altman are not entirely new, this is the first time his youngest sibling has gone so far as to take legal action. She is demanding a jury award her a total of $150,000 subsequent to a trial in which she presumably would have to testify under oath in court.
A statement on Tuesday that Sam Altman attributed jointly to himself, his two younger brothers Jack and Max, and their mother denied the allegations. Instead the remaining immediate family—Altman's father has already passed away—blamed Ann's allegations on a history of mental illness.
“All of these claims are utterly untrue,” they wrote. “It is especially gut-wrenching when she refuses conventional treatment and lashes out at family members who are genuinely trying to help.”
Graphic allegations put forth in detail
The lawsuit is only a few pages long, but it describes in graphic detail what Ann Altman claims was visited upon her repeatedly at the hand of her 9-years-elder brother beginning around the year 1997.
According to her lawsuit, the rape, sodomy, and molestation continued up until 2006, by which point Sam Altman had reached the age of adulthood.
His sister is seeking $75,000 in damages each for two separate counts, one involving sexual assault and another involving the lesser charge of sexual battery. The case was filed in a U.S. federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the state where she grew up near St. Louis and where the events supposedly occurred.
“At all times relevant herein, Defendant, Sam Altman, groomed and manipulated Plaintiff, Ann Altman, into believing the aforementioned sexual acts were her idea, despite the fact she was under the age of five years old when the sexual abuse began and Defendant was nearly a teenager,” wrote Ann Altman’s lawyer, Ryan Mahoney, in the filling.
Ann Altman documented her progression from illness to prostitution
Far from disputing the family’s allegation of illness, Ann Altman has been very open about the mental, physical and financial difficulties she claims to have endured.
Altman’s sister argues they stem heavily from the trauma she allegedly received as a child at the hand of her accused abuser—now one of the most influential men in Silicon Valley and a billionaire to boot.
These include a vivid account posted in March of last year to the platform Medium explaining how her abuse had manifested itself physically much later in life.
“In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted,” she wrote.
Nonetheless, she says a lack of money eventually compelled her to support herself first through an OnlyFans account, before graduating to hardcore pornography with film partners and ultimately prostitution at one point.
The Altman family disputed her financial troubles in its statement, however.
“Annie receives monthly financial support, which we expect to continue for the rest of her life,” the joint statement read. “Despite this, Annie continues to demand more money from us.”
Ann Altman first went public with her claims in 2021, and has maintained her allegations throughout. In an X post addressed to her eldest brother, she wrote “you’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality,” a reference to his eventual coming out.
Sensitive juncture for OpenAI
The lawsuit comes at a sensitive juncture for OpenAI. Altman is attempting to navigate a restrictive corset of laws in order to change its hybrid corporate structure from a nonprofit with a capped-profit subsidiary to a more conventional for-profit “benefit corporation” similar to rivals like Anthropic and the recently formed xAI.
Without continued access to investor funds, OpenAI could struggle to pay the exorbitant costs for training increasingly more advanced versions of its GPT large language model, an artificially intelligent neural network.
Cofounder Elon Musk, owner of xAI, is however suing OpenAI to contest its plans to shed its nonprofit status—despite evidence suggesting he fully supported the idea earlier.
While Musk’s argument is believed thin due to the legal peculiarities governing nonprofits, one wrong move by OpenAI when changing its legal status and authorities could impose a massive tax bill that would spook investors and limit Altman's ability to continue raising billions of dollars in loss-absorbing equity.
Already a controversial figure in the AI scene, Altman has faced damaging allegations of duplicity in the past from former board members who sought to fire him in November 2023. The company has since suffered from repeated bouts of internal turmoil.
Fortune has reached out to OpenAI requesting a comment on the lawsuit.
