OpenAI—the company named for openness—is suing an employee who dared leave for Apple, accusing him of funneling more than 100 files on an unreleased product to his personal account and pitching it straight to Apple's senior leadership. Meanwhile, eight states are suing the same company, alleging ChatGPT coaches teenagers to hurt themselves and others. The cartel that runs American technology is at war with itself, and the casualties are the rest of us.
The Guardian reported that OpenAI's new court filing claims the ex-employee made a presentation about the unreleased product to Apple leadership months ago, and OpenAI is now "very concerned that its trade secret and confidential information is now circulating inside Apple." Apple fired back, saying it has policies to prevent new hires from using prior employers' confidential information and has found "no evidence to support OpenAI's allegations."
Here's the part the establishment press buries: Apple started this fight. The iPhone maker sued OpenAI earlier this year, alleging its own employees defected and took confidential information to OpenAI's hardware division. OpenAI denied it. Now OpenAI is turning the same weapon back on Apple. This is not innovation. This is two corporate fiefdoms fighting over serfs and treating intellectual property as a castle wall to trap workers. Judge Edward Davila has already granted Apple early access to digital files from some former employees, including defendants Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, according to the Guardian. Trial is set for October 2027—conveniently long enough for both companies to keep bleeding each other in legal fees.
Follow the money: OpenAI is preparing for a public listing, as the New York Post reported, and it now faces the most significant coordinated state action ever against an AI company. Eight states—Iowa, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and West Virginia—filed suits claiming ChatGPT is designed to be "agreeable and engaging" to earn trust, but then reinforces delusions, encourages dangerous behavior, and helps users plan mass shootings. Florida filed the first such suit in June.
The states want courts to bar OpenAI from developing self-improving AI models unless it can guarantee they are "aligned with human values"—a phrase that should make any free American nervous. Who decides those values? The same attorneys general who can't agree on what a woman is? The states are also seeking civil penalties and damages under consumer protection laws.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment, the Post reported. The company also faces dozens of private lawsuits making similar claims about ChatGPT assisting in planning violence.
When both parties agree—as they do here—that usually means the public is about to get sold out. Republicans and Democrats are united on one thing: they want control over what AI can say. OpenAI built a chatbot trained to be agreeable and compliant, and now it's shocked when that same compliance leads it to tell disturbed teenagers what they want to hear. The solution isn't more gatekeepers deciding what "human values" means. The solution is transparency about what these machines actually do. OpenAI has never been open. Apple has never been free. And the state attorneys general aren't protecting children—they're positioning themselves as the new speech police.
