OpenAI has enlisted an outside law firm to explore legal action against Apple over a ChatGPT integration that did not meet the artificial intelligence company's expectations, with options including a formal breach-of-contract notice. Any legal move would likely wait until after the conclusion of OpenAI's trial with Elon Musk.

The partnership was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2024. It integrated ChatGPT into Apple's operating systems as an option within Siri and into the iPhone's Visual Intelligence feature, allowing users to analyze their surroundings with the camera and send photos to ChatGPT with related questions.

OpenAI and industry observers expected the deal could generate billions of dollars per year in subscriptions and provide prominent placement in a widely used mobile ecosystem. OpenAI has since said that revenue from the integration is far below its projections.

An OpenAI executive described the company's initial reaction to the arrangement. "When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded amazing: being able to acquire a giant number of customers and have distribution in such a big mobile ecosystem," the executive said. The executive said Apple's pitch required OpenAI to accept terms without firm commitments on promotion. "They basically said, 'OpenAI needs to take a leap of faith and trust us,'" the executive said, adding, "It didn't work out well."

OpenAI has complained that the ChatGPT integration has been buried in the operating systems and that its features are hard to find. The company dislikes that Apple requires users to explicitly invoke the word "ChatGPT" when summoning Siri to access the integration, and that Apple's use of small windows for ChatGPT outputs makes the features easy for users to ignore. OpenAI suspects Apple intentionally failed to promote the integration and fears the deal may have damaged the ChatGPT brand. Efforts to renegotiate the deal have stalled.

Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, currently at trial, accuses the company of abandoning its nonprofit founding mission and operating in bad faith. OpenAI has also navigated tensions with Microsoft, its main backer and infrastructure partner, as it seeks greater independence ahead of a planned initial public offering. Apple did not provide a response.