Cha-no-ching! 😉 Reports are that Apple will get ChatGPT for free from OpenAI in their partnership. But OpenAI gets value in a different way.

As reported by Mashable (Apple reportedly paid OpenAI zero dollars for its ChatGPT partnership, written by Cecily Mauran and available here), zero dollars was exchanged between Apple and OpenAI in its new partnership.

According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, Apple will get ChatGPT for free from OpenAI to incorporate into Siri and other apps. Nor is OpenAI paying Apple for unprecedented access to iPhone, iPad, and Mac users. Instead, mass distribution is the valued commodity, not cash.

Partnering with OpenAI gives Apple the chance to offer splashy generative AI capabilities to consumers and keep investors happy. Right around the time Apple mentioned ChatGPT at WWDC, Apple stock prices spiked on Nasdaq.

The partnership ostensibly gives OpenAI access to billions of Apple devices. But Apple may have gotten the better end of the deal, since OpenAI pays Microsoft for hosting ChatGPT on its Azure cloud servers. “The more people use ChatGPT, the more OpenAI’s expenses rise. And the integration into Apple devices — while optional for users and limited to the company’s recent products — threatens to add significantly to the computing budget,” said Gurman.

Apple and OpenAI have had busy weeks. Apple is still in talks with Google over adding Gemini as a chatbot alternative. In the meantime, lawyers for Elon Musk on Tuesday moved to dismiss the billionaire’s lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. That de-escalated quickly! Why? One reason could be that several of Musk’s emails from OpenAI’s early days appeared to show Musk acknowledging the need for the company to make large sums of money to fund the computing resources needed to power its AI ambitions, which stood in contrast to the claims in his lawsuit that OpenAI was wrongly pursuing profit.

Well, Elon may not be suing OpenAI anymore, but he did declare after the Apple-OpenAI partnership announcement this week that “[i]f Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS (operating system) level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies”, calling it “an unacceptable security violation”. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em. 😉

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that Apple will get ChatGPT for free from OpenAI? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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