Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav OpenAI is reportedly exploring legal options after Apple’s ChatGPT integration into its products didn’t live up to the AI firm’s expectations.
When the deal was announced, Apple likened features linking Siri to ChatGPT to its now-infamous deal embedding Google search in the Safari browser, insiders granted anonymity to discuss the “strained” partnership told Bloomberg. And the promise of that excited OpenAI, which expected the deal “could generate billions of dollars per year in subscriptions,” an OpenAI executive granted anonymity to discuss the partnership told Bloomberg.
Instead, OpenAI suspects Apple intentionally failed to promote the integration and fears that the deal may have damaged the ChatGPT brand, sources said.
As the OpenAI executive explained, Apple didn’t fully explain how the integration would work when the deal came together, so OpenAI took a “leap of faith” it now appears to regret.
“When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded amazing: being able to acquire a giant number of customers and have distribution in such a big mobile ecosystem,” the executive said, attempting to explain why OpenAI was willing to enter the arrangement blind. Since then, efforts to renegotiate the deal have “stalled,” Reuters reported. And, supposedly due to feeling “burned,” OpenAI has declined to enter other partnerships to work on Apple’s AI models, Bloomberg reported.
According to the insiders, OpenAI is so disappointed in Apple’s work that the AI firm is now “actively working with an outside legal firm on a range of options that could be formally executed in the near future.”
“We have done everything from a product perspective,” the OpenAI executive summed up OpenAI’s frustrations to Bloomberg. “They have not, and worse, they haven’t even made an honest effort.”
Supposedly, OpenAI is still hoping to resolve its issues with Apple outside of court, if possible. But one option that OpenAI may pursue could be accusing Apple of a breach of contract. Going that route wouldn’t necessarily require filing a lawsuit right away, sources suggested.
Apple and OpenAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.
Most likely, OpenAI will delay approaching Apple until after its court battle with Elon Musk concludes, Bloomberg reported. A decision in that litigation is potentially coming next week.
OpenAI also faces a court battle with Musk over its Apple deal. However, it may be inconvenient for Musk that tensions between OpenAI and Apple have grown since he filed a lawsuit last August. Musk alleged that the deal integrating ChatGPT into Apple products violated antitrust and unfair competition laws, supposedly propping up OpenAI to dominate the chatbot market and Apple the smartphone market.
So far, Musk’s lawsuit has survived motions to dismiss, though the judge has yet to comment on its merits. That leaves Apple and OpenAI potentially stuck defending the deal at a trial scheduled for October, even if it falls apart.
However, the partnership’s end may make it harder for Musk to uphold his claims of a conspiracy in his lawsuit.
Due to Musk’s fury that his chatbot Grok has never been featured as a “Must Have” app in Apple’s App Store, the lawsuit alleged that Apple and OpenAI struck a deal as part of a giant conspiracy to lock out rivals developing chatbots that Musk claimed Apple fears could make smartphones obsolete. As Musk’s theory goes, Apple was so afraid of Musk’s plan to turn X into an “everything app” that it partnered with OpenAI to supercharge ChatGPT as a market leader and constrain X’s innovation.
Increasingly problematic for Musk, the looming fallout between OpenAI and Apple suggests their allegiance is not that deep. Bloomberg’s sources suggested that Apple was happy to partner with OpenAI as its own AI projects failed to launch but over time became less inclined to boost ChatGPT after learning about OpenAI’s plans to make its own device that could rival the iPhone. Reuters suggested that Apple was so “rankled” by OpenAI teaming up with its former star designer Jony Ive that it lost motivation to help supercharge ChatGPT as OpenAI expected.
For Musk, it may become impossible to argue that OpenAI and Apple are colluding to keep Apple at the top of the smartphone market when OpenAI is working on its own device. And his arguments about ChatGPT’s supposed “exclusivity” are also falling apart, as Apple is now testing Siri integrations with Anthropic’s Claude and Google Gemini.
OpenAI’s executive insisted to Bloomberg that OpenAI’s potential legal action has nothing to do with Apple expanding its AI partners, emphasizing that the deal was never intended to be exclusive.
With tensions high, Apple and OpenAI would probably prefer to keep details about how the deal came together secret. However, although Musk’s lawsuit may be losing steam, it has recently succeeded in forcing Apple and OpenAI to be more transparent about the deal.
This week, magistrate judge Hal Ray Jr. denied Musk’s request to see Tim Cook’s internal messages discussing the deal but ordered Apple to share documents by mid-June from Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi.
Federighi “made high-level, strategic decisions about the Apple-OpenAI Agreement,” the judge noted, and “may have unique relevant evidence not already produced relating to Apple’s integration of OpenAI into Apple Intelligence.” Apple will also have to provide any “documents that refer to potential exclusivity clauses of the artificial intelligence provider for Apple products,” as Musk tries to keep his antitrust fight alive.
It’s possible that OpenAI and Apple will make up before Musk’s lawsuit heads to trial this fall. In June, Apple is expected to unveil a revamped Siri that could better promote ChatGPT in ways that resolve at least some of OpenAI’s concerns, Bloomberg reported.
OpenAI maintains that Musk is distorting antitrust law as part of a “harassment campaign” attacking OpenAI to slow down its work, so that Musk’s xAI can catch up. Apple argued that a Musk win would devastate the tech industry by setting an alarming precedent that any deal with a supplier violates antitrust law if other proposals are rejected. Perhaps most damning for Musk’s case, both OpenAI and Apple have urged the court to agree that Musk cannot show harm since none of his firms make smartphones.
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