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OpenAI has accused Apple of waging a “careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit” in a blog post rebutting the iPhone maker’s claims that the AI start-up stole top-secret information.
“We do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets,” the ChatGPT maker wrote on Monday evening, accusing Apple of “making vague accusations” and “trying to change their narrative”.
The post marks the latest escalation in a dispute that began last month when Apple filed a lawsuit claiming OpenAI had stolen hardware designs as it planned to launch its own AI-focused consumer devices.
The dispute comes as the two companies encroach on each other’s territory, with OpenAI venturing into consumer products and Apple joining forces with Google to revamp its Siri voice assistant.
OpenAI and Apple had previously partnered to integrate AI technology into Apple’s products. But the relationship began to sour after OpenAI last year acquired io, the design studio founded by former Apple design chief Sir Jony Ive, and hired a string of Apple employees.
Apple alleged in its lawsuit that more than 400 of its former employees now worked at OpenAI. It said it had received no response from OpenAI in February after contacting the start-up to warn it of an internal investigation into the potential theft of Apple’s trade secrets.
OpenAI said Apple’s lawyers had “emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names” and “claimed they had a discussion with our General Counsel, which they now concede never happened”.
The start-up said Apple “never raised the specific allegations in this lawsuit at that time” and “in fact told us that they were ‘resolving any issues’. We then heard nothing for five months until they sued.”
Apple alleged in its lawsuit that Chang Liu, a former employee who worked on some of its “most sensitive product development programs”, accessed Apple’s trade secrets after leaving the company in January.
However OpenAI said Apple employees had themselves contacted Liu “and asked for his help to locate this information”, something the iPhone maker “only now admits”.
Apple also named in its lawsuit a second former employee, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer Tang Tan, whom it accused of seeking out proprietary information when interviewing Apple’s employees.
“Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies,” wrote OpenAI.
Apple on Monday sought a preliminary injunction in the US to prevent former employees and OpenAI from accessing, using or disclosing its trade secrets. It also filed a second motion asking the court to expedite discovery and order several OpenAI employees, including Liu and Tan, to sit for depositions.
OpenAI said Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction was “both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets”.
“Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time, and built a reputation for obsessing over the smallest details. This careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit sadly doesn’t live up to that reputation,” the ChatGPT maker wrote.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
