OpenAI has fired back at the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple, accusing it of using trade secrets claims to hobble recruitment.
For those not in the know, Job’s Mob filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of California, accusing OpenAI chief hardware officer Tang Tan and OpenAI technical staff member Chang Liu of taking confidential information after exiting its cult.
According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI hit back saying Job’s Mob filed a baseless lawsuit to slow its hiring and stall rival hardware work. The AI outfit said many of the claims come down to dodgy offboarding procedures inside Job’s Mob.
“This dispute is a mess of Apple’s own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else. Apple blames employees who left the company for taking their personal accounts with them, even though Apple encouraged them to use personal accounts for work,” OpenAI said.
OpenAI said Tan only emailed himself non-confidential files, personal notes and a manager’s checklist that was widely accessible. It denied claims that Tan urged Apple staff to bring “actual parts” to OpenAI interviews for “show and tell.”
OpenAI said any parts brought along were old or publicly available components used as “demonstrative aids.” It said that sort of thing was common practice in engineering interviews.
The AI outfit said Liu was dragged in after Job’s Mob staff contacted him following his departure. They asked him to help locate files they still needed, and Liu obliged. Earlier on Monday, Job’s Mob filed a new brief claiming fresh evidence that Liu downloaded a confidential “Apple circuit schematic” and used it in his OpenAI work.
The legal scrap shows how quickly the relationship has soured since 2024, when the two companies signed a deal to make ChatGPT work with Siri. Job’s Mob’s new Siri AI, announced in June, is powered by Google Gemini.
OpenAI has become a serious potential threat to Job’s Mob. It wants to build AI-driven devices that could challenge the iPhone, while Job’s Mob has struggled to produce convincing AI features for its shiny coloured rectangles.
OpenAI said its “first expected hardware product is a new type of consumer device that differs materially from known Apple products.”
Tan spent 24 years at Job’s Mob and became a senior executive on its product design team. He worked closely with Apple former head of industrial design Sir Jony Ive. Tan left Job’s Mob to join Ive’s AI device startup io Products, which later merged with OpenAI. The lawsuit does not name Ive, who is known to be close to Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
OpenAI used the filing to take a few swings at Job’s Mob’s AI record. It cited 400 employees who had left the iPhone maker to join OpenAI.
“Apple cannot stop the next 400 employees from leaving by filing baseless lawsuits. They can leave a company like Apple, which has struggled to adopt AI, and move to an exciting startup that builds innovative products. Apple may not like those choices. But it cannot claim those choices are unlawful,” OpenAI said.
