Apple Inc. today sued OpenAI Group PBC for allegedly stealing intellectual property related to its consumer devices.
The iPhone maker filed the complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
OpenAI entered the consumer electronics market last year when it bought io Products Inc., a startup founded by former Apple executives. The Information reported in February that the ChatGPT developer was working on a smart speaker and smart glasses. Additionally, it’s believed that OpenAI could launch a smart lamp with artificial intelligence features.
The company has reportedly hired more than 400 former Apple employees to support its hardware push. According to today’s lawsuit, OpenAI has been instructing candidates to bring blueprints and device prototypes from the iPhone maker to interviews. The ChatGPT developer allegedly also asked some Apple staffers to share engineering methodologies.
One of the individuals allegedly involved in the effort is io Products co-founder Tang Tan, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Tan spent more than two decades at Apple before launching the startup. He is currently OpenAI’s chief hardware officer.
According to the lawsuit, Tan instructed Apple staffers recruited by OpenAI to stay as long as possible at the iPhone maker. He allegedly provided them with information about Apple’s security procedures. The company charges that the information came from a confidential internal document improperly retained by Tan after his departure.
The other individual that the lawsuit names as a defendant is Chang Liu, a former Apple engineer who joined OpenAI this year. The iPhone maker alleges that Liu failed to return a work laptop after his departure. Furthermore, Apple claims that Liu used the machine to log into its internal network and download dozens of files that contained information about upcoming products.
The iPhone maker is seeking damages from OpenAI. Additionally, it has asked the court to block the ChatGPT developer from using its trade secrets without permission.
“At every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” Apple wrote in the lawsuit.
OpenAI said in a statement responding to the complaint that “we have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
The lawsuit is particularly notable because Apple inked a software partnership with OpenAI in June 2024, a year before the io Products acquisition. The companies developed an integration that enables Siri to route complex prompts to ChatGPT. This past January, Apple announced plans to release a new version of the AI assistant that will use Google LLC’s Gemini model series.
Photo: Pixabay
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