Apple’s high-profile collaboration with OpenAI to bring generative artificial intelligence (AI) to the iPhone “dramatically underperformed” following its 2024 introduction, according to newly disclosed court filings that reveal the internal tensions behind the alliance. The records essentially provide OpenAI’s first public account of the tie-up. In its legal filings, the AI company expressed deep disappointment over weak engagement from iPhone owners after striking a landmark 2024 agreement for ChatGPT to backstop “Apple Intelligence.”The court documents reveal that rolling out the tool across hundreds of millions of devices yielded little measurable commercial upside. The ties eventually soured, and later spiraled into a bitter legal confrontation, culminating in a major trade secret theft lawsuit initiated by Apple in July.
Muted demand and friction over default settings
The court documents reveal (via The Financial Times) that when the companies first finalised their arrangement in 2024, OpenAI anticipated a substantial brand ‘halo effect’ alongside a sharp rise in paid subscriptions driven by Apple Intelligence users. However, just four weeks after rollout, the integration got off to a sluggish start, forcing OpenAI to downgrade its internal forecasts for weekly active users. By mid-2025, company leadership concluded the integration was falling short of expectations.The filings point out that Apple set the ChatGPT integration to “off” by default. iPhone users had to navigate a multi-step sequence within system settings to turn the feature on – the process purportedly stifling widespread adoption.Soon, OpenAI management grew anxious that Apple would seek alternate technological partners to accelerate delivery, cutting short OpenAI’s window to corner Apple’s global user base.
Apple choose Google Gemini for ‘Siri AI ’
Struggling with weak user uptake and a two-year delay in overhauling its voice assistant, Apple formally struck a deal with Google in January to power its revamped “Siri AI” using Gemini models. Earlier this month, Apple rolled out the Google-backed voice assistant in English under a public beta label. While ChatGPT remains accessible on iOS devices as a writing assistant and fallback query engine for standard Siri searches, its presence has been largely sidelined by the new Gemini deployment.OpenAI noted that rather than cementing its dominance, the Apple rollout occurred alongside a dip in its broader market share, as competitors such as Google, Anthropic, Meta and Grok captured greater consumer momentum.The Financial Times reported in May that OpenAI was considering suing Apple for failing to satisfy its contractual obligations under the initial pact.
