Things between Apple and OpenAI have gone south pretty quickly.
Not long ago, the two companies were working together to bring ChatGPT into Apple products.
Now Apple is accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets, and potentially destroying the evidence needed to prove it.
The latest shenanigans centre on a MacBook belonging to former Apple engineer Chang Liu, who now works at OpenAI.
Apple says the laptop contained evidence that Liu accessed confidential Apple material after leaving the company, including circuit schematics and other proprietary files.
Apple is now pushing for faster discovery, arguing that important digital records could be lost or overwritten.
OpenAI has denied the allegations and says Apple has only itself to blame for what it describes as sloppy employee offboarding.
The company argues that Apple lets staff access work files through personal iCloud accounts, then cuts them off quickly when they leave, making it harder to properly return devices and separate company material from personal accounts.
The wider lawsuit also points to OpenAI’s aggressive hiring of former Apple staff as it builds out its own hardware ambitions.
So, for now, the two sides are miles apart.
Apple says OpenAI benefited from stolen secrets and may have compromised evidence. OpenAI says Apple’s own internal processes created the problem.
Either way, the friendly Apple-OpenAI era is starting to feel pretty distant.
