Apple's new OpenAI partnership raises concerns over at Microsoft

In a couple of weeks, it is expected that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives will make mention of their newly solidified partnership with OpenAI to help usher in a new artificial intelligence age for the company, and this prospect has Microsoft very concerned.

On the surface, Microsoft’s concerns over Apple leveraging OpenAI’s large language model ChatGPT to power its products and services can be taken as catty industry infighting, but the Redmond based software company is also apprehensive of the logistical issues this collaboration could cause.

According to The Information, Apple and OpenAI are nearing the end-of-the-road on a year-long negotiation talk that would result in former utilizing the popular ChatGPT LLM to spruce up several aspects of iOS, MacOS and iPadOS that include Apple Photos, Siri, iMessage, email, Settings, and more.

Apple is also rumored to be in talks with Google to leverage its Gemini LLM as well, but there have only been signs ChatGPT being tested in Siri thus far. Possible roadmaps for Apple’s new AI push could include OpenAI appearing at this year’s Worldwide Developer Convention (WWDC), with deeper Google integration showing up in iOS18 in late 2024 or 2025, and the eventual platform shift to a homegrown LLM that the company has been rumored to be working on since 2022.

Nevertheless, Microsoft is concerned about OpenAI’s partnership with Apple not because it has the potential to split its Copilot audience as it would directly battle possible AI enhancements in Copilot + PCs versus Macs or Office 365 versus iWorks, but both Apple and Microsoft server massive audiences to which capacity becomes an immediate issue.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a rather busy man these past couple of years, but he recently spoke with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to assuage his concerns over support capacity and data centers as well as revenue splits to recoup the multi-billion-dollar investment from Microsoft.

In a way, OpenAI’s partnership with Apple has the potential to be a lucrative deal that puts even more money back into Microsoft’s wallet after its placed upwards of $12 billion into its partnership with the ChatGPT provider.

Altman and Nadella will need to come to consensus soon as Apple is rumored to showcase the benefits of its new agreement with OpenAI, in less than two weeks.