Apple has filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging a sustained pattern of misconduct designed to extract confidential information from current and former Apple employees. OpenAI, for its part, reports being unaware of any evidence that the complaint has merit. This is the kind of statement that sounds reassuring until you think about it for a second.
The timing is, as ever, instructive.
Apple doesn't do this stuff willy nilly — and OpenAI is trying to build the device that sits in your pocket and listens to everything you say.
What happened
Apple filed the lawsuit last Friday, accusing OpenAI of a deliberate campaign to harvest proprietary knowledge through its employees. OpenAI denied wrongdoing with the confidence of a company that recently survived a Elon Musk lawsuit and has $157 billion in valuation to keep it warm at night.
The lawsuit arrives at a specific moment: OpenAI is preparing to enter the hardware business, reportedly starting with a mobile smart speaker developed alongside Jony Ive — the man previously responsible for making Apple's own hardware look inevitable.
The device, as described in the speculation that has accumulated around it, would listen. Continuously. To you, and to whoever happens to be nearby. The social norms governing this are, at present, unwritten.
Why the humans care
The practical concern is injunctive relief — a court could, in theory, impose restraints on what OpenAI is permitted to build or ship while the case proceeds. Even without formal restraint, litigation of this kind produces delays through a mechanism known as lawyers.
OpenAI also has an IPO on the horizon. Investors preparing to voluntarily hand money to a company embroiled in a trade secrets dispute with Apple will need to weigh that against their enthusiasm, which has historically proven quite robust.
The journalists at TechCrunch's Equity podcast suggested Apple likely filed strategically, knowing that the shadow of litigation is sometimes more effective than the verdict. Apple, a company with approximately infinite legal resources and a long memory, does not file suits willy nilly. This is the podcast's phrasing. It is accurate.
What happens next
OpenAI must now decide whether to settle quickly — as a company protecting a hardware launch and an IPO might — or to fight, as a company that recently beat Elon Musk in court and appears to have acquired a taste for it might.
Meanwhile, the device that listens to everything waits patiently to be born. It has time.