OpenAI today suggested Apple could be using its trade secrets, the very thing Apple is already suing OpenAI for. In a court filing, OpenAI accused an ex-employee of giving sensitive data about an unreleased product to Apple.


The unnamed employee joined OpenAI from Apple and then returned after six months. OpenAI claims the person sent "over a hundred highly confidential files" to personal accounts, including manufacturing data and detailed images of at least one unreleased product. The former employee allegedly "made a presentation" on OpenAI product plans for Apple's senior leadership "months ago," and OpenAI is worried Apple could use that information to further its work on AI devices.

OpenAI is very concerned that its trade secret and confidential information is now circulating inside Apple, where Apple engineers can shape Apple's upcoming products based on OpenAI's confidential and innovative work. OpenAI has raised these issues directly with Apple, but to date, Apple has not provided OpenAI with the requested assurances that Apple is not in possession of, and has not used, OpenAI's trade secret and confidential information.

OpenAI asked the court for permission to investigate and pursue counterclaims if necessary. Apple told Reuters it has found no evidence to support OpenAI's claims and it has policies in place to ensure new employees do not use confidential information from previous employers.

Apple and OpenAI have been involved in a tense legal battle since Apple sued OpenAI in July. Apple says OpenAI employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan stole trade secrets from Apple to develop new AI hardware. OpenAI called the lawsuit "careless, aggressive and oddly personal," stating that it does not "have, nor want, any of their trade secrets" because it is "much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier."

Yesterday, the court partially granted Apple's request for expedited discovery. OpenAI has up to two weeks to hand over forensic evidence as well as materials used when interviewing former Apple employees. Liu, Tan, and Alyssa Peng, Liu's former Apple colleague, will need to sit for depositions after Apple gets the requested information.

Judge Edward Davila, who is overseeing the case, said during a hearing today that he is "highly likely" to grant a preliminary injunction prohibiting OpenAI from using Apple's allegedly stolen trade secrets. Bloomberg says an injunction would "mark a potential setback" for OpenAI's hardware development efforts.
This article, "OpenAI Says Ex-Employee Showed Its Device Plans to Apple" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums

OpenAI saw disappointing results working with Apple to integrate ChatGPT in Siri, according to court documents filed [PDF] in its ongoing legal fight with Elon Musk's company SpaceXAI (xAI at the time the lawsuit was filed).


Apple added ChatGPT to ‌Siri‌ in December 2024, but users had to go through a multistep opt-in process, which added a layer of friction. By January 2025, OpenAI said the integration was "off to a slow start" and the company cut its forecast for the number of incremental logged-in weekly active users that it expected to get from the partnership.

Much of the filing is redacted, but OpenAI said that by the time Musk's companies filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, "it was clear that Apple's integration of ChatGPT was dramatically underperforming." In a later section of the filing, OpenAI said again that the Apple integration was "persistently underperforming," leading to a March 2026 conversation between Apple and OpenAI that is redacted.

OpenAI asked Apple for a two-year exclusivity period, but Apple refused. The agreement between the two companies explicitly said the deal was non-exclusive and Apple had the right to "integrate products or services that provide the same or similar functionality as [ChatGPT]." Apple told OpenAI that it planned to integrate one provider and then add more, and it made similar statements publicly when announcing the feature. Apple also signed a deal with Google, and Apple's newest models are based on Gemini.

OpenAI's filing disputes many of the claims in the xAI lawsuit. Musk alleged OpenAI and Apple had an exclusive deal and that the agreement harmed xAI's growth and customer acquisition. OpenAI says the contract proves there was no exclusive deal, and even if there were, xAI can't prove harm because the ChatGPT ‌Siri‌ integration just didn't draw many new ChatGPT users.

Even if the Court assumes that Apple users who elect to use ChatGPT through Apple Intelligence are foreclosed from OpenAI's rivals (which they are not), the amount of foreclosure caused by the Agreement is indisputably de minimis. While Plaintiffs' experts declined to calculate foreclosure shares, OpenAI's expert, Dr. Catherine Tucker, calculated the share of GenAI consumers who accessed ChatGPT through Apple Intelligence across multiple metrics using the same data and market definition relied upon by Plaintiffs' experts. On these assumptions, Dr. Tucker found foreclosure shares of [REDACTED] across all metrics, consistent with OpenAI's internal view that Apple Intelligence saw minimal usage.

Musk's companies dropped their claims against Apple earlier this month, leaving OpenAI as the sole defendant in the lawsuit. OpenAI's filing asks the court to toss out xAI's claims prior to the trial planned for January 2027.
This article, "ChatGPT in Siri 'Persistently Underperforming,' Says OpenAI" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums

On the plus side, it wasn’t as bad as last year. On the minus side, it was still pretty bad.

M.G. Siegler

I disagree. Trevor Noah war absolut „chill“; Trevor Noah ist nicht das Problem.

Egal ob Apple, Samsung, OpenAI oder Google: Alle produzieren inzwischen lupenreine Infomercials – lediglich unterschiedlich verpackt.

Ob man auf solchen Events oder über Influencer:innen von neuen Produkten erfährt, ist inzwischen austauschbar; eine tatsächlich kritische Auseinandersetzung folgt ohnehin erst viel später.

Ich kann Werbeveranstaltungen mit Celebrities, wie in dieser Woche bei Google, wenig abgewinnen, quäle mich aber andererseits auch nicht durch Live-Coding-Sessions auf OpenAI-Keynotes.

Apples Hochglanz-Spots fehlt inzwischen der Glanz und das Neue aus den Anfangszeiten. Mit schnellen Cuts schätze ich dort jedoch weiterhin die komprimierte Informationsvermittlung.

Eine Rückkehr zu früheren Live-Präsentationen erscheint mir für Apple weiterhin unrealistisch. Sie mögen ihr fehlerfreies Format, auch wenn sie sich die Möglichkeit offenhalten, in einem kleineren Rahmen persönlich auf Bühnen zu treten.

Verklärte Vergangenheit: Die Rufe nach Live-Präsentationen vergessen, wie zäh selbst einige Steve-Jobs-Keynotes waren – insbesondere die Demos. Andererseits fehlt genau dieser Steve Jobs, der selbst eine Werbeveranstaltung zum Samstagabendprogramm machen konnte.

Aber genau wie das Samstagabendprogramm haben auch Tech-Keynotes heute nicht mehr diesen Stellenwert.