By Stephen Nellis and Deepa Seetharaman
NEW YORK, Oct 14 (Reuters) – An OpenAI employee who left the ChatGPT maker for Apple sent more than 100 files about an unreleased product to a personal account and later made a presentation about the unreleased product to senior Apple leadership, a new filing in the lawsuit between OpenAI and Apple alleges.
In the filing in US federal court in San Jose, California, OpenAI alleged that the presentation happened months ago and that Apple is now making AI products of its own, citing the release of Apple’s HomeView product this week.
“OpenAI is very concerned that its trade secret and confidential information is now circulating inside Apple, where Apple engineers can shape Apple’s upcoming products based on OpenAI’s confidential and innovative work,” OpenAI said in its filing.
Apple said that it has policies and procedures in place to ensure new employees do not use confidential information from previous employers and that it has found no evidence to support OpenAI’s allegations.
The document, filed on Tuesday, is part of an ongoing trade secret dispute filed by Apple earlier this year in which it alleged employees of the iPhone maker left and took confidential information to OpenAI’s hardware division. OpenAI has denied those allegations.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in New York and Deep Seetharaman in San Francisco, Editing by Franklin Paul and Bill Berkrot)
