Apple has made it clear that it plans on opening up its AI relationships. OpenAI isn’t taking it well. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the partnership between the two companies has become strained lately, and OpenAI is looking at its legal options—as if the company hasn’t spent enough time in court lately.
Whether there’s a case for OpenAI to pursue is an open question, but it is pretty clear from the report that the company has found Apple to be a pretty cold partner. Per Bloomberg, OpenAI expected ChatGPT to be more deeply ingrained in the iOS ecosystem and feature prominently on the mobile platform so that iPhone users would know they were using ChatGPT. That just never really came to fruition.
It’s understandable why OpenAI would want that. When the two first signed an agreement back in 2024, ChatGPT was the only AI model to integrate into Apple Intelligence, including serving as the brains of a supposedly smarter Siri voice assistant. But Apple has had nothing but trouble actually making its AI features work, so it might have saved OpenAI some trouble by not associating ChatGPT with broken tools.
Apple also hasn’t exactly been thrilled with how things have gone with OpenAI. Per Bloomberg, the company apparently had real doubts that it could trust OpenAI to protect user privacy. It also reportedly didn’t take super kindly to OpenAI announcing plans for its own device, which seems like it will just be a competing smartphone—but, hey, a smartphone from iPhone designer Jony Ive. It’d be understandable if Apple would just like OpenAI to get some of its own ideas.
The simmering resentment between the two has apparently stalled out negotiations to re-up the agreement. Apple seems like it’s decided to move on from exclusivity entirely and reportedly plans to open Apple Intelligence to any AI model that wants to participate—including OpenAI rivals like Google and Anthropic. That doesn’t leave OpenAI with much other than being a face in the crowd, which isn’t going to drive subscriptions the way that it expected.
It seems unlikely that OpenAI would pull out of the iOS ecosystem as retribution, simply because there are too many users there to leave on the table. It does seem like the company may opt to take some legal action against Apple, but even that might be more of a symbolic gesture than anything meaningful. Bloomberg suggested the company may send Apple a notice alleging that it is in breach of its contract without actually filing a lawsuit. You can probably bet that one ends up in the shred pile.
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