OpenAI is turning up the sass on Apple.
The ChatGPT maker said in a court filing this week that Apple’s lawsuit accusing it of stealing trade secrets amounted to sour grapes after it fell behind in the AI talent war.
“Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees,” OpenAI said in the filing, in which it asks a judge to dismiss Apple’s suit.
Big Tech companies have fought each other for talent over the last couple of years, offering staggering wages and other benefits in efforts to poach a limited pool of top engineers from rivals.
Meta, for example, has managed to steal some of OpenAI’s top researchers. It lured Shengjia Zhao, the cocreator of ChatGPT, last year. Meta also hired away Alexandr Wang to lead its superintelligence team by buying the company he started, Scale AI, for $15 billion.
In its lawsuit, Apple said the total number of Apple alums now working at OpenAI exceeds 400.
Apple sued OpenAI in July, alleging the ChatGPT maker benefited from trade secrets stolen by former Apple employees hired away by OpenAI. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Chang Liu, a veteran Apple engineer, improperly retained and accessed confidential company information after leaving for the AI lab in January.
In OpenAI’s latest filing, the company said it’s common practice to recruit top talent from Apple and other companies.
“OpenAI does have an interest in hiring the best engineers, inventors, developers and creators — many of whom have decided to leave Apple and to come to OpenAI, attracted by the innovative and exciting work the company is doing,” the AI startup said in the filing.
An Apple spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement Thursday that “significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies.”
Apple has not yet filed a response in court to OpenAI’s filing, and a judge has not ruled on the request for a dismissal. In a blog post on Monday, OpenAI said, “We do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.”
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