The gloves are off in the feud between Sam Altman and Elon Musk

• Sam Altman and Elon Musk escalated their long-running feud on Tuesday in a series of posts on X.
• Each of the tech giants traded barbs about deaths and safety concerns tied to each other's products.
• The pair is in the middle of a lengthy legal battle over OpenAI's status as a for-profit entity.

Sam Altman and Elon Musk are at it again, with each of the tech titans taking aim at the other in a series of heated posts on X.

Musk appeared to start the latest escalation early on Tuesday morning, when he posted "Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT" in response to a post that said that use of OpenAI's chatbot had been linked to the deaths of nine children and adults since it was released in 2022.

Altman fired back, first in defense of ChatGPT and OpenAI's desire to protect its users, and then blasting Tesla's Autopilot technology, calling it unsafe.

"It is genuinely hard; we need to protect vulnerable users, while also making sure our guardrails still allow all of our users to benefit from our tools," Altman said.

Altman continued, calling out Autopilot.

"I only ever rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released," he wrote. "I won't even start on some of the Grok decisions."

Altman added: "You take 'every accusation is a confession' so far."

There have been at least eight wrongful-death lawsuits filed against OpenAI that allege use of ChatGPT has contributed to worsening mental health conditions, leading to instances of suicide and murder, including among children and young adults.

Safety concerns around Tesla's self-driving technology have also been central to multiple wrongful-death lawsuits, including one surrounding a 2019 crash in Florida that left a 22-year-old woman dead. A jury determined Tesla was 33% liable for the crash and awarded the plaintiffs $329 million in total damages, Business Insider previously reported.

Representatives for Musk and Altman did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The social media feud comes as the pair is stuck in the middle of a long-running legal battle over OpenAI's status as a nonprofit company. Musk sued Altman, and other leaders of OpenAI, alleging that they misled him when they decided to pursue a for-profit structure, moving the company away from its original nonprofit mission.

Musk said he donated $38 million to OpenAI when it was originally founded as a nonprofit.