Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the ChatGPT maker poached its employees and coaxed them into handing over confidential designs and tightly held trade secrets to build a rival hardware device, a dramatic rupture between two firms that were partners barely two years ago.
“Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes and products,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email.
The complaint, filed on Friday, pulls no punches. “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote.
Among those named is Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer and a former Apple vice-president, who is accused of taking information about Apple suppliers with him and encouraging interviewees to divulge confidential material.
“He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information,” reads the complaint.
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