You’re right that Altman is/will sell it as an unexpected but necessary adaptation to external circumstances, but that’s a hard sell. Potentially not to a court, sadly, but definitely in the public eye. For example:

  We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions… We are committed to providing public goods that help society navigate the path to AGI.   

And this is the very first paragraph of their founding blog post, from 2015:

  OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.