Oakland, California - Elon Musk's courtroom showdown with Sam Altman officially got underway on Monday with the start of jury selection in a trial over the billionaire's accusation that his OpenAI co-founders betrayed a non-profit mission to build artificial intelligence for the good of humanity and not for the money.

The legal clash in a courtroom across the bay from San Francisco pits the world's richest person against a startup Musk once backed and now competes with in the booming AI sector.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is a formidable rival to the chatbot Grok, made by Musk's xAI lab.

"This is a tech soap opera that all investors will be watching," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

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"There will be a lot of dirt and slings thrown around in court between Musk and Altman, and that is not a good thing for anyone involved...but Musk has made this personal."

Jurors were asked their thoughts on Musk and Altman, and whether they could put aside any bias while considering evidence at trial.

"Elon doesn't care about people, much like our president," said a retiree being considered for the panel.

An Oakland city employee in the jury pool referred to Musk as "a jerk."

In contrast, Altman's name struck potential jurors as familiar but did not evoke strong opinion.