The celebrated alliance between Apple and OpenAI is now officially on trial. Elon Musk’s lawsuit has placed the partnership under intense legal scrutiny, forcing the two companies to publicly and legally defend a deal that was previously seen as an unassailable strategic triumph.
The core of their defense will be to prove that their collaboration is pro-consumer and pro-innovation. They will argue that integrating ChatGPT into iOS provides a superior user experience and that the market remains open for other AI apps, including Musk’s Grok. They will paint the deal not as an exclusive “conspiracy,” but as a standard technology licensing agreement.
However, they will face tough questions about the nature of the integration. Musk’s lawyers will probe whether the deal includes terms that disadvantage or exclude rivals, and whether Apple’s promotion of ChatGPT goes beyond normal marketing into the realm of anticompetitive favoritism. The very documents that define the partnership will become key evidence.
For both Apple and OpenAI, the stakes are enormous. They must defend not only the legality of this specific deal but also their right to form such deep partnerships in the future. The trial will be a referendum on their business practices, with their reputations and strategic roadmaps hanging in the balance.