OpenAI has hit back at Apple's lawsuit — with receipts

Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

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OpenAI says Apple got its facts wrong — and says it has the receipts to back it up.In a Tuesday blog post, OpenAI called Apple's July complaint accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets a "careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit."OpenAI said Apple had made mistakes when it earlier contacted the AI lab about its concerns, including "emailing the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names."Last month, Apple filed a suit against OpenAI, accusing it of stealing trade secrets using a "coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level." Apple said that a former employee who joined OpenAI exploited an authentication bug, that OpenAI asked Apple engineers to bring in proprietary hardware during job interviews, and that OpenAI leadership "normalized" such conduct.OpenAI denied wrongdoing at the time and said that it was not interested in Apple's trade secrets. Neither company immediately responded to a Business Insider request for comment. In Tuesday's post, OpenAI shared what it said were copies of email correspondence showing that Apple's outside counsel mistakenly sent OpenAI's general counsel a follow-up that had been intended for a former Apple employee."Apple had claimed that they contacted OpenAI in February and that we didn't respond," OpenAI wrote in its blog post. "They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention."