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Apple accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets as it seeks to build its own hardware for ChatGPT, a major rupture in a partnership between the iPhone maker and the artificial intelligence company.
Apple said in the lawsuit filed in a California federal court that OpenAI encouraged Apple employees it was recruiting to share confidential information, even guiding how to avoid scrutiny when taking jobs at the other company.
“This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI,” the filing says. “Apple brings this suit to put a stop to it.”
Two former Apple employees who now work for OpenAI are also named as defendants. One is Tang Tan, who helped design the iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPod and is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. The other is Chang Liu, a former electrical engineer, whom Apple says it entrusted with some of its most sensitive product development efforts before Liu left Apple to join OpenAI earlier this year.
OpenAI said it is still reviewing the filing, but spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement that OpenAI has “no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
OpenAI has never said exactly what type of device it is building, but has described it as an effort to find a new way to interact with AI that goes beyond “traditional products and interfaces.” It’s part of a broader push to create a physical embodiment of the latest AI advances, a decade after Amazon and Google introduced screen-free talking speakers into homes.
The lawsuit claims the effort was built partly on knowledge stolen from Apple.
Apple said it began investigating whether some of its confidential information was compromised and “uncovered a pattern of theft” of Apple’s trade secrets by former employees who moved on to positions at OpenAI.
An Apple spokesperson said in a statement that the company will “always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”
This article was provided by The Associated Press.