alt Hacker NewsApple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets
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This is basically the end of OpenAI hardware. This is by far worst than the Waymo vs. Uber lawsuit which killed the Uber self driving project.
Also if you are a business using OpenAI models, I would highly suggest you do not because they are most likely looking at your code and IP.
OpenAI is about to get ROCKED on this. From this report, this looks open and shut. Apple has basically infinite money and incredible lawyers. Not sure what OpenAI can counter with unless they have clear, hard evidence this hasn’t been happening.
Until the industry addresses the Original Sin of Generative AI (and the ascendance of Thievery Corporations), we should expect more and more of this. So far, theft has been rewarded. As long as you make enough money, people seem to be okay with ignoring long-lasting impacts of intellectual theft. As long as you become King of the Cannibals, it seems many are happy to remember you as King and not as the Cannibal.
A company that behaves like this in one area, cannot be trusted in any area. Any enterprise that endorses/allows OpenAI products to be used is taking a big risk.
Apple kindly wanted to make OpenAI add in some legal liabilities to their IPO filling.
Discovery is going to be great fun (for Apple).
This is a really bad look for a company that has vast quantities of our IP stored on its servers.
Interesting how Tang Yew Tan worked at Apple for 25 years (!!) and then threw it all out for this.
Casually dragging new employees into the deepest shit, it’s breathtaking. Also the naïveté of going along with it??
> He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information
Probably among many reasons for the switch to Gemini for their band aid AI until they get theirs were they want/need.
Apple: they stole our trade secrets. OpenAI: we just asked GPT-5.6 to predict what Apple was working on and it was weirdly accurate.
Altman showing how desperate he is to get into hardware. He knows local models that supplement models in chip are the end of OIA
In every company I've worked at (all with >1000 employees), there is always some text in the offer or onboarding documents clearly stating that you should not bring any previous employer's trade secret or intellectual property to this company.
I wonder whether Open AI's offer letter or onboarding document also says such a thing.
This may be the reason why OpenAI reportedly delayed its IPO.
They might have had an inkling that this was coming.
Why are most lawsuits filed on Friday? To avoid the excessive news cycle? But in this case, Apple might want that.
I forgot they were still working on a device, any guesses what it is?
I’m guessing a wrist wearable
Wow. Makes me see OpenAI in an entirely different light.
If you sleep with dogs you're gonna get fleas. These AI companies have made billions by stealing other peoples content, what makes you think they would be above stealing from Apple?
It's ok because this information was just being used to train their models.
New revenue streams
Seems to me that OpenAI has a culture of questionable ethics that includes this incident but goes way beyond it. This seems very “on brand” for them.
Copy of the Complaint.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.47...
9. In the months before he left Apple, Mr. Tan met with OpenAI or its collaborators and discussed meetings with a key Apple supplier. He began emailing himself information about Apple’s suppliers and internal summaries of the consumer electronics industry. And today, when interviewing Apple employees for jobs at OpenAI, Mr. Tan uses Apple’s confidential information to gain access to even more insider knowledge. He has used an Apple internal project codename to ask, “What’s the plan[?]” for an unannounced Apple product. He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information. These directions to bring Apple’s parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates, who commented that he “didn’t even know we could take those from the office.”
10. This is part of OpenAI’s strategy to extract Apple’s confidential information. OpenAI has been instructing Apple employees to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to their interviews and to divulge details about their work such as “subsystem and component selection,” the “tools or methodologies you use for system integration, such as CAD software, simulation tools,” and “Vendor selection and communication/collaboration with vendors.”
11. OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can. After his own departure, Mr. Tan improperly retained or obtained an internal Apple managers’ document marked “Need to Know” that describes security procedures for employee departures. Messages left on Apple-issued work devices show that Mr. Tan and his OpenAI colleagues have been sharing this document with new hires before they give notice to Apple of their departures, previewing Apple’s security protocols. Unsurprisingly, Apple’s investigation has found a pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended to protect Apple’s confidential information.
Quick reminder that Apple was part of the silicon valley crew that partook of illegal non-poaching arrangements with other SV companies, helping to stifle salaries and more.
But, that's a bit of a tangent. On the other hand, Apple is accused of (and a jury ruled against them on the issue) hiring from Masimo to steal trade secret. Appeals are pending, of course, but it's a reminder that Apple is not lily white on this topic.
I'm curious, who is actually making the calls and who is actually doing the scouting for these people. If this is coordinated, the chain must long, so let's see it!
This is going to be interesting.
Only because both companies have access to billions and infinite lawyers.
If you think this is bad, I promise that anything they're doing at Anthropic is 10x worse.
Get ‘em Apple. Begin the IP wars have…
This kind of stuff happens all the time. The employees in question are just incredibly bad at covering their tracks, normally they'd get fired and that would be it.
It is fishy that OpenAI's leadership didn't have the watchdogd in place to catch it. And there's this huge public lawsuit about it now. Plus there's the Elon lawsuit. Makes me think somebody wants OpenAI to go down. Almost like a sacrificial scapegoat, in order to achieve psychosocial unity in the programming community, or something like that.
probably the real reason why Apple opted Gemini over ChatGPT
> Chang Liu
What did he steal, Garageband?
Nothing is too low for Sam. I expect any kind of shady shit from that company
Weirdly, this seems like they're trying to train a model to work like Apple? They seem really interested in processes and how stuff is done, rather than only the finished artifacts.
Reminder that Apple hired 30+ engineers from Masimo and stole multiple trade secrets, including their blood-oxygen monitoring tech, leading to a $634 million judgement against them. They also asked President Biden to intervene and pressure the ITC to reverse their ruling.
Not saying OpenAI is innocent here of course, but really no large corporation is. This is just how the game is played.
Sam Altman is doing Sam Altman stuff.
> According to a report by The New Yorker, Swartz described Altman as a "sociopath" who "can never be trusted" and "would do anything
Who is surprised by this development?
I will never grow tired of highly paid so-called geniuses so deluded by their own hubris they think no one will not only not notice them moving GBs of data onto a USB on their last day of work, but assume they also don't have logs of everything you accessed and everything you took.
Little no-name companies have this capability with off the shelf software.
Large companies like Apple have entire departments of staff whose job it is to monitor data theft.
It's bonkers and I love every single story as if it's never been told before.
Super stupid actions by these ex-employees LMAO
These people think OpenAI can/will protect them?
Hot take, but Apple has done the same and worse to many other companies when they could. Of course Apple can sue and they will probably settle some amount with OpenAI, but acting like this is not commonplace in today’s business environment, and OpenAI is uniquely worse at stealing corporate secrets is laughable. Especially considering Apple’s famous history!
WOW so these companies really are stealing enterprise data to make competing products! Fucking slimy! How can anyone trust them now?
Well they trained their model by scraping all digitised human knowledge and ignoring IP and CW laws so whats a little bit of corporate espionage in the grand scheme of things
[flagged]
Stop trying to cram your "P" into "AI".
Some pretty damning stuff:
> OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can.
> Apple says it discovered a pattern of OpenAI recruits emailing themselves confidential information when leaving Apple, including Tan.
> OpenAI apparently used confidential Apple hardware information when approaching Apple suppliers, and tricked one company into using a "specific trade secret metal-finishing technique" for an OpenAI device by claiming it had Apple's permission to do so.
> Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI.
Non-competes and the like are gross but what's described here isn't just "bring your expertise to OpenAI" it's "here is how to steal secrets on your way out" which is even grosser.