Apple on Friday accused OpenAI of stealing secrets about products still in development, setting up a legal face-off between two of the world’s biggest tech companies.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the consumer tech giant said that OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence that has a new hardware business, had asked job candidates from Apple to share details about secret projects and to bring device components and prototypes to their interviews.
Apple also accused an OpenAI employee of downloading internal documents from a laptop owned by the iPhone maker.
OpenAI used the confidential information to approach Apple’s manufacturing partners, including asking one partner to demonstrate Apple’s technique for finishing metal on its devices, the lawsuit says.
If even half the accusations are true, then OpenAI doesn’t have a chance in hell of existing at the end of this. The accusation alone might sink the company. They’re projected to be completely out of money this time next year, they might have saved it with an IPO, but the general vibe is not optimistic for them, and that was before being accused of blatant industrial espionage of Apple IP.
I have never once given Apple money, and very likely never will, but if they kill OpenAI and pop this bubble then I’ll give them a slight nod of respect before I go back to asking pointed questions about why all their factories need suicide nets.
i dunno, apple has a real habit of suing for theft and losing
Suing as a patent troll, but this sound lass like Apple being Apple, and more like some serious, and highly illegal, industrial espionage from OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Sam Altman built his business on theft, and may very well seriously overstepped here. I also expect a bunch of former Apple employees going to jail over the physical thefts, and that too will cause OpenAI problems because they asked for the thefts, and likely paid the former Apple employees.
It might be a long shot but there is a possibility that if they lose, OpenAI just hands the keys over to Apple. I don’t know if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.