TL;DROpenAI is preparing possible legal action against Apple over their two-year-old ChatGPT-Siri partnership, which OpenAI says has failed to deliver expected subscription revenue. OpenAI lawyers are working with an outside firm on options including a breach-of-contract notice. OpenAI believed the deal could generate billions per year; instead, Apple’s implementation buried ChatGPT behind friction, and users overwhelmingly prefer the standalone app. Apple is meanwhile opening iOS 27 to rival AI models (Claude, Gemini), has struck a $1B/year deal with Google for Siri’s underlying AI, and settled a $250M class action over falsely advertised AI features. OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s device startup adds a hardware rivalry to the legal tensions.
OpenAI’s partnership with Apple, announced to considerable fanfare in June 2024, is fracturing. The AI company’s lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on options that could include sending Apple a formal notice alleging breach of contract, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the deliberations. No lawsuit has been filed, and OpenAI says it still hopes to resolve the dispute without going to court. But the company has concluded that Apple failed to hold up its end of a deal that was supposed to turn ChatGPT into a default feature of the world’s most valuable consumer ecosystem.
