OpenAI tells judge Apple's trade-secret suit is 'rotten to its core'

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss Apple's trade-secret lawsuit, arguing the iPhone maker filed the complaint without investigating the facts and is using litigation to cover for its own inability to retain AI talent.

Lawyers for OpenAI told the court in a filing that Apple's allegations are meritless and falsely portray the actions of the San Francisco startup's employees. The ChatGPT maker said its chief hardware officer, Tang Tan, conducted interviews in line with industry-standard recruiting practices. The former Apple engineer accused of stealing confidential files, Chang Liu, was in fact helping a former Apple colleague who had asked him to locate information needed for ongoing work, the filing said.

"Plainly filed without adequate investigation and built on selectively excerpted communications and ordinary conduct stripped of context, Apple's complaint is – to borrow its own phrase – 'rotten to its core,'" OpenAI's lawyers wrote.

"Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent," they added.

The filing also takes a shot at Apple's own AI efforts. OpenAI claims the iPhone maker has struggled to integrate artificial intelligence into its products and is trying to portray routine hiring practices as corporate espionage.

Apple's suit "recasts the benign, lawful conduct of former employees – who in many of the cited instances were in fact trying to help Apple, at Apple's request, by making sure their former colleagues' work could continue without them – as theft of so-called trade secrets," the filing states.

The latest filing comes shortly after Apple expanded the legal fight. The company claimed it had found at least 10 other former Apple employees who may have been involved in the alleged trade-secrets theft, apart from Liu, Tan and OpenAI employee Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng.

Apple also filed for a preliminary injunction asking the court to order OpenAI to stop using what it describes as stolen trade secrets and return any confidential Apple information while the lawsuit proceeds.

Apple filed the suit last month, accusing OpenAI of orchestrating a campaign to obtain confidential information by recruiting its employees. The company alleged that Liu downloaded confidential hardware-related files after joining OpenAI by exploiting an authentication bug that allowed him to keep accessing Apple's internal systems.

OpenAI disputes that claim. The company included excerpts of text messages that it says show Apple employees requesting Liu's assistance after he had already left the company.