Alex Heath, on Threads:
At WWDC, Apple execs I met with were ice-cold when I asked about their OpenAI partnership.
Now we know why: Apple just sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to consumer hardware (Apple and OAI senior leaders are in Sun Valley this week. Yikes!)
I noticed the same ice-cold reaction to my questions about ChatGPT and Siri. (In fact, I think Heath and I even talked about it together when we bumped into each other at the end of the day on Monday during WWDC week.) At the time I took it as Apple execs not wanting to distract from the fact that Siri AI with Apple Intelligence, with no third-party plug-in, was truly competitive. But in hindsight their coolness, I think, was about this.
There was no response like, say, “We think ChatGPT is great and we’re happy to keep it available in iOS 27 as an option for our customers who love that experience, but the new Siri AI truly stands on its own.” That’s a typical Apple answer. But what they actually said was just more like “The ChatGPT extension remains available.” I didn’t think much of it at the time but now it stands out.