OpenAI is working with an outside law firm on possible legal action against Apple over the ChatGPT integration into Siri, according to people familiar with the partnership cited by Bloomberg. An OpenAI executive said the deal was pitched internally as something that "could generate billions of dollars per year in subscriptions," comparable to Google's deal embedding search in Safari. Instead, OpenAI now believes Apple deliberately buried the feature, damaging the ChatGPT brand in the process.
The complaints are concrete. OpenAI objects to Apple forcing users to "specifically invoke the word 'ChatGPT' when speaking or typing a command" to Siri, and to the small response windows that surface only fragments of ChatGPT output. The design, the OpenAI side argues, ensures users can easily ignore the integration entirely. Renegotiation talks have stalled, and OpenAI has refused to enter additional partnerships on Apple's own AI models.
Sam Altman and Eddy Cue announced the partnership together on June 10, 2024, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, with Apple positioning ChatGPT as the first of multiple model partners it would route Siri queries to. The OpenAI executive granted anonymity to Bloomberg said the company took the deal on faith. "When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded amazing: being able to acquire a giant number of customers and have distribution in such a big mobile ecosystem," the executive said.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI expected the Apple ChatGPT integration to generate billions of dollars per year in subscriptions, an executive told Bloomberg.
- 02OpenAI is working with an outside legal firm on options that could be executed in the near future, with breach of contract one possible route.
- 03Renegotiation talks between OpenAI and Apple have stalled, and OpenAI has declined to work on further Apple AI partnerships.
- 04Musk's antitrust trial against OpenAI and Apple over the deal is scheduled for October; Apple must turn over Craig Federighi's documents by mid-June.
- 05Apple is testing Siri integrations with Anthropic's Claude and Google Gemini, undercutting Musk's exclusivity claims.
Eighteen months in, the assessment from the OpenAI side is blunter. "We have done everything from a product perspective," the executive said. "They have not, and worse, they haven't even made an honest effort." OpenAI is reportedly still hoping to resolve the dispute outside court, and people close to the company say a breach-of-contract claim would not necessarily mean an immediate lawsuit.
“We have done everything from a product perspective. They have not, and worse, they haven't even made an honest effort.”— Jaeden Schafer
AI Chat Daily reported last week that OpenAI was weighing legal options on this same partnership; the new detail is that an outside firm is now actively scoping the case. OpenAI and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
The timing is awkward because Elon Musk's separate antitrust lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple, filed last August, is heading toward an October trial. Musk alleges the two companies colluded to lock rivals — including his xAI chatbot Grok — out of the iPhone ecosystem, propping up ChatGPT as the default chatbot and Apple as the default smartphone. The suit survived motions to dismiss, though the judge has not ruled on the merits, and a related decision could land as soon as next week.
A fracturing partnership cuts both ways for Musk's theory. On one hand, magistrate judge Hal Ray Jr. this week ordered Apple to produce documents by mid-June from Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, who Ray wrote "made high-level, strategic decisions about the Apple-OpenAI Agreement" and "may have unique relevant evidence not already produced relating to Apple's integration of OpenAI into Apple Intelligence." Ray denied Musk access to Tim Cook's internal messages but required Apple to hand over any documents referring to potential exclusivity clauses.
On the other hand, the conspiracy narrative is harder to sustain when the two alleged co-conspirators are reportedly preparing to sue each other. People close to Apple told Bloomberg the company cooled on promoting ChatGPT after learning OpenAI was developing its own hardware device with former Apple designer Jony Ive, a product positioned to compete with the iPhone. Apple is also testing Siri integrations with Anthropic's Claude and Google Gemini, undercutting any claim that the OpenAI deal was exclusive.
OpenAI argues Musk is distorting antitrust law as part of a "harassment campaign" to slow OpenAI's work while xAI catches up. Apple has told the court that a Musk win would "devastate the tech industry by setting an alarming precedent that any deal with a supplier violates antitrust law if other proposals are rejected." Both companies have asked the court to find that Musk cannot show harm because none of his firms make smartphones.
There is also a path where this all resolves. Apple is expected to unveil a revamped Siri in June, and Bloomberg's sources say the redesign could address at least some of OpenAI's complaints about how ChatGPT is surfaced. OpenAI's executive insisted to Bloomberg that the legal review is not about Apple adding Claude and Gemini as alternatives — the deal, the executive said, was never meant to be exclusive.
The OpenAI side has reason to delay any formal filing until Musk's October trial resolves. Suing Apple while Apple is defending against Musk on antitrust grounds would muddy both cases, and OpenAI's lawyers would prefer a clean record going into any breach claim.
The deeper signal here is about distribution. OpenAI bet that Apple's install base would convert into paid ChatGPT subscriptions at a scale that justified accepting Apple's design terms sight unseen. That bet has not paid off, and OpenAI's response — building its own device with Ive and looking hard at the contract — suggests the company no longer believes platform partners will be neutral carriers of its product. For every AI firm currently negotiating distribution deals with Apple, Google, or Microsoft, the message is that the platform owner's incentives can flip the moment the partner starts looking like a competitor.
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