- OpenAI is reportedly unhappy with its AI partnership with Apple
- That could lead to it suing Apple, Bloomberg claims
- Apple is also reportedly unhappy with OpenAI
Apple’s attempt to fix Siri with external AI help could hit serious snags.
According to a new Bloomberg report, OpenAI is becoming increasingly frustrated with its partnership with Apple, to the point that the company is now reportedly considering legal action. Bloomberg claims the relationship has become so “strained” that OpenAI believes it is no longer getting the benefits it expected from integrating ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence features.
Over the past few years, Apple has teamed up with other tech companies to boost its Apple Intelligence system as it tries to get its artificial intelligence (AI) platform in tip-top shape. That includes getting Google’s Gemini to power some of its more advanced features and tying OpenAI’s ChatGPT into tools like visual intelligence. But now the partnership with OpenAI may be at stake.
“OpenAI attorneys are actively working with an outside law firm on a number of opportunities that may be formally executed in the near future,” Bloomberg explains. However, the two companies may not end up duking it out in court, and OpenAI may instead decide to send Apple “a breach of contract notice without necessarily filing a full lawsuit initially.”
Why is OpenAI upset about the current situation? The company apparently expected the partnership with Apple to “lure more users to subscribe to the chatbot,” Bloomberg says, while it also “anticipated deeper integration across more Apple apps and a prime placement in the Siri assistant.”
It hasn’t happened. Instead, ChatGPT is limited to a few areas of iOS and often has to be invoked specifically using the word “ChatGPT”, making it less obvious to users that the chatbot is available. According to Bloomberg, that has left OpenAI frustrated and looking for some sort of solution.
Whether or not this dispute comes to trial, it could have ramifications for Apple fans if the two sides can’t resolve their differences. Apple could increasingly start favoring different chatbots over ChatGPT, for example, or it could even remove OpenAI’s tool from iPhones altogether if the collaboration falls apart. That would mean a very different AI experience on the iPhone, if that’s going to happen.
An unhappy ending?
However, it appears that this is a two-way street, and Bloomberg claims that Apple has its own reasons for complaining about the deal. Specifically, the company is reportedly concerned about whether OpenAI is truly committed to user privacy — a key concern for Apple — and is “ranked” by its move to hardware, especially since those plans involve former Apple design chief Jony Ive and other key workers who have been poached from Apple.
The Bloomberg report quotes an unnamed OpenAI executive as saying that “We’ve done everything from a product perspective.” Apple, they claim, has failed to reflect this commitment. Worse, they claim that people at Apple “didn’t even make an honest effort.”
Explaining the background to the deal, the executive said: “When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded fantastic: to be able to acquire a huge number of customers and have distribution in such a large mobile ecosystem.” Still, Apple wouldn’t reveal exactly what the project was, saying only “OpenAI has to take a leap of faith and trust us,” according to an OpenAI exec.
However, one key element missing from Bloomberg’s article is what OpenAI’s legal basis actually is. Has Apple broken its contract with the AI startup? If so, what parts of the agreement has it breached? None of that has been disclosed.
All we know from the report is that Apple’s plans to open up iOS to other AI chatbots — including Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini — aren’t the root cause, as the partnership with Apple “wasn’t meant to be exclusive from the start.”
But what’s clear is that both sides feel pissed off about the deal, if Bloomberg’s reporting is correct. Whether it escalates to a lawsuit — and if so, what comes of it — remains to be seen, but it’s increasingly looking like this relationship is headed for an unhappy ending.
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