On Friday, Apple accused OpenAI of stealing secrets related to products still under development, paving the way for a legal confrontation between two of the world's largest technology companies, according to the New York Times.

Apple said in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence company that recently entered the hardware manufacturing field, asked job candidates who were Apple employees to disclose details about secret projects and bring hardware components and prototypes with them to job interviews.

Apple also accused an OpenAI employee of downloading internal documents from a laptop belonging to the manufacturer of iPhone phones.

The lawsuit added that OpenAI used the confidential information to communicate with Apple's manufacturing partners, including asking one partner to demonstrate Apple's proprietary technology for metal surface finishing in its devices.

According to the lawsuit, Apple sent a letter to OpenAI last February, expressing concerns that "confidential information may have reached OpenAI's operations unlawfully," noting that the company did not respond to the letter.

The lawsuit filed by Apple stated: "OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on extremely fragile foundations, having been eroded from its roots due to its illegal reliance on stolen trade secrets."

Tense partnership between tech giants

Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI adds a new chapter to the deteriorating partnership between the two tech giants. Apple has largely remained on the sidelines of the artificial intelligence race, while other technology companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars building AI models and data centers, and startups push the boundaries of the technology to new heights.

In an attempt to catch up, Apple signed an agreement with OpenAI in 2024 to use the startup's AI technologies to revamp its products, including its digital assistant Siri.

However, OpenAI was disappointed with the way Apple integrated ChatGPT technology, to the extent that it considered taking legal action.

Last January, Apple said it had partnered with Google to power Siri and its other AI-based products.

Tensions between the two companies increased after OpenAI, which filed a confidential request for an initial public offering, began developing its own line of devices.

Apple employees move to OpenAI

Last year, OpenAI paid $6.5 billion to acquire IO, which was then a design studio founded just one year earlier by Jony Ive, Apple's longtime former head of design. Since the deal closed, Apple engineers and designers have successively left to join OpenAI.

In the lawsuit filed Friday, Apple accused Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a former Apple executive, of instructing employees he poached from Apple on how to bypass the company's security procedures when leaving.

Apple also accused another former employee, Zhang Liu, of using an Apple-owned laptop belonging to a former colleague to access and download technical documents while working at OpenAI.

Apple said that Liu told that employee about information regarding unannounced products that she should study before job interviews.

The lawsuit added that Liu also planned to access internal documents via an Apple-owned laptop, but did not return it upon leaving the company.

Apple demands ban on use of its secrets

Apple stated in the lawsuit that OpenAI misled the manufacturing company it contacted to learn about the metal finishing technology, leading it to believe it had Apple's permission to view this technology.

The company seeks a court order preventing OpenAI from possessing, using, or sharing its trade secrets, along with an order requiring it to return its intellectual property.