OpenAI appears to be falling into a rift with another heavyweight partner, Apple, according to people familiar with the matter. An OpenAI employee with knowledge of the situation said that the artificial intelligence startup is considering taking legal action against Apple on the grounds of breach of contract, involving the ChatGPT access cooperation agreement officially announced by the two parties two years ago.
At the 2024 Apple Developer Conference, Apple executive Craig Federighi announced the integration of ChatGPT functionality into Apple devices.
The person said that OpenAI has been trying to repair its partnership with Apple in the past few months, but Apple has been passive and has done nothing. Although OpenAI is unwilling to go to the step of suing, it does not rule out filing a lawsuit unless Apple shows more sincerity in cooperation.
Apple has had fierce legal disputes with many partners in the past, but it is rare for a well-known partner to publicly express dissatisfaction and issue legal threats before formally suing.
Behind the breakdown of the relationship between the two parties is that Apple has continued to win over other artificial intelligence companies in the past year.
Last year, Apple reached a cooperation with Google and planned to integrate the Google Gemini large model to comprehensively revamp the Siri voice assistant. At the same time, Apple is also using the Claude model of OpenAI competitor Anthropic on a large scale internally for code development and various business scenarios.
Multiple people familiar with the matter revealed that OpenAI has also poached a large number of people from Apple's hardware engineering team to prepare to build its own full range of AI hardware products, including self-developed mobile phones.
Apple is deeply dissatisfied with this and has begun to take retention measures to prevent core talents from being poached. Former Apple core figures who have joined the OpenAI hardware project also include Apple’s former chief designer Jony Ive.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has had tense relationships with partner giants.
Its cooperation with Microsoft has also become increasingly estranged due to multiple conflicts. The differences focus on issues such as OpenAI's acquisition of Microsoft's computing resources and cross-border cooperation with Microsoft's competitors. The two companies last month finalized a restructuring of their cooperation structure, averting a potential legal dispute that would have arisen if OpenAI allowed Amazon to distribute its AI services.
Bloomberg first exclusively reported OpenAI’s plan to sue Apple.
In 2024, Apple launched its self-developed artificial intelligence platform Apple Intelligence, and OpenAI was the first large model manufacturer to access the platform.
The cooperation between the two parties originally allowed Apple users to call ChatGPT through Siri to handle complex problems, such as saying to Siri: "Help me write a job application letter using ChatGPT"; users can also use OpenAI models to complete tasks such as drawing and copywriting.
At that time, OpenAI originally hoped to significantly increase the number of users and paid subscriptions through this cooperation. Executives had been optimistic that this cooperation would be as important in the future as Apple and Google's cooperation on Safari's default search engine.
But all expectations were ultimately dashed.
According to a recent report by the technology media "The Information", OpenAI believes that Apple not only deliberately hides and marginalizes ChatGPT-related functions, but also deliberately limits the upper limit of ChatGPT functions in the iOS systems of iPhone and iPad, showing no willingness to invest or long-term layout in cooperation.
OpenAI insiders said that the reason for considering holding Apple accountable this time is not because of Apple's alliance with other AI companies, but simply a dispute over the specific terms of the contract signed by the two parties two years ago.
The person also accused Apple of relying on its market monopoly for a long time to reap benefits from various cooperations, while rarely giving reciprocal returns to its partners. (The specific terms of the cooperation agreement between the two parties have not been disclosed.)
OpenAI isn't alone in its disappointment with Apple Intelligence.
Apple’s internal employees and executives also generally believe that Apple’s current round of AI product releases have not met expectations. Because the performance of its self-developed large model was not as good as expected, Apple postponed the launch of the new version of Siri (originally planned to be released last year); after a series of mistakes, Apple has changed the person in charge to take over the voice assistant business again.
Last week, Apple just agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over unfulfilled Apple Intelligence promotion promises.
The industry expects that Apple will officially demonstrate the new Siri equipped with Google's Gemini model at the Worldwide Developers Conference next month.