Apple sues OpenAI: accuses it of stealing company secrets

In a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the consumer technology giant claimed that OpenAI, an artificial intelligence leader with a new hardware division, had asked Apple job candidates to share details about secret projects that will carry components and prototypes of devices to their interviews.

Apple also accused a OpenAI employee downloading internal documents of a laptop owned by the iPhone manufacturer.

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI used the confidential information to contact Apple’s manufacturing partners, even going so far as to ask one of them to demonstrate Apple’s technique for finishing metals on its devices.

According to the lawsuit, Apple sent a letter to OpenAI in February to express concern that confidential information could be improperly reaching OpenAI. Apple claimed that OpenAI did not respond.

“OpenAI’s fledgling hardware business now sits on extremely shaky foundations, rotten to the core by its unlawful reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in its lawsuit.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to the request of comments.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement for news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied those allegations.)

Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI aggravates the deterioration of the relationship between these technological giants. Apple has stayed away from AIeven as other tech giants invest hundreds of billions of dollars in building AI models and data centers, and as startups push the boundaries of this technology.

To catch up, Apple reached an agreement with OpenAI in 2024 to use the AI ​​startup’s technology and revamp its products, including its Siri digital assistant. However, OpenAI was disappointed by the way Apple integrated ChatGPT and even considered taking legal action. In January, Apple announced its collaboration with Google to power Siri and its other AI products.

To add insult to injury, OpenAI, which has confidentially filed to go public, is creating a new family of hardware products for itself.

Last year, OpenAI paid $6.5 billion to acquire IO, which at the time was a barely a year-old design studio founded by Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. Since then, engineers and designers have progressively left Apple to join OpenAI.

In its lawsuit on Friday, Apple accused Tang Tan, OpenAI’s hardware director and former Apple executive, of instructing his new employees coming from Apple on how to bypass security processes from Apple for employees who leave the company.

Mr Tan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple accused another former employee, Chang Liu, of using a former colleague’s Apple laptop to access and download technical documents while he worked at OpenAI. According to Apple, Liu told that employee what information about unannounced products she should study before job interviews.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Liu also planned to access internal documents through a laptop owned by Apple that he did not return when he left the company.

Mr. Liu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI tricked the manufacturing company it approached for information about the metal finishing technique into believing it had Apple’s permission to view it.

Apple is seeking an injunction preventing OpenAI from possessing, using or sharing Apple’s trade secrets, as well as an order forcing OpenAI to return Apple’s intellectual property.