In July, Apple filed a blockbuster lawsuit against OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, accusing the company of hiring former Apple employees and improperly gaining confidential information.
Now, OpenAI is striking back against Apple, but not just in court. On Aug. 3, OpenAI posted a public blog post denying many of Apple’s claims. The post also includes recreations of texts and copies of emails that OpenAI says directly contradict some of the facts presented in the lawsuit.
In effect, OpenAI is moving this fight into the court of public opinion — and bringing receipts.
As a result, this complex legal drama is now playing out in the open, giving the public an inside look at how lawsuits like this are handled behind the scenes.
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OpenAI’s blog post, “Apple is getting this wrong,” contains some not-so-subtle digs at Apple’s legal counsel, which OpenAI says initially contacted the wrong person at OpenAI and misrepresented their conversations in legal filings.
Apple had claimed that they contacted OpenAI in February and that we didn’t respond. 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. Apple also claimed they had a discussion with our General Counsel, which they now concede never happened. But they again hide the fact that they never raised the specific allegations in this lawsuit at that time, and that they in fact told us that they were “resolving any issues.
That email is included in Apple’s legal filings. Now, OpenAI has posted a back-and-forth with Apple’s outside legal counsel, detailing the confusion.
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The blog post also states, somewhat passive-aggressively, “We wish Apple had raised these issues with us before they filed their lawsuit and would have been happy to clarify all of this with them. We have taken the allegations in the lawsuit seriously and offered to work with Apple to resolve this. Instead, they’re trying to change their narrative, including by making vague accusations about other former employees, and will likely keep repeating this tactic.”
The background on Apple Inc. v. Liu
Apple filed its lawsuit, Apple Inc. v. Liu, on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Apple’s lawsuit named both OpenAI’s commercial and nonprofit entities, as well as its hardware company io Products, former iPhone engineer, Chang Liu, and OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan, who worked at Apple for 24 years before joining OpenAI.
“This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI,” Apple said in the complaint.
In the ongoing AI arms race, Big Tech companies like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic have spent tens of billions of dollars poaching talent from each other. Last year, Meta was reportedly offering signing bonuses of up to $100 million.
Because employees typically sign ironclad non-disclosure agreements when starting a role, they are forbidden from sharing a company’s trade secrets after moving to a rival company.
In its lawsuit, Apple accuses OpenAI of conspiring with former Apple employees to benefit from its trade secrets. However, OpenAI denies these claims, and the new blog post includes numerous exchanges between Apple employees and Chang Liu that the AI company says directly contradict Apple’s suit.
“Apple accuses Chang Liu of accessing Apple confidential information after leaving the company, but only now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information (you can read the messages here).”
It’s hard to imagine Apple, a famously tight-lipped company, posting a public blog post about the lawsuit the way OpenAI has. That ability to speak directly to users, and not solely relying on lawyers, could give OpenAI an edge in the battle of public opinion, even if the suit is ultimately decided in court or in a settlement.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.