Apple calls OpenAI's hardware business'rotten to its core' in trade secret theft lawsuit Apple calls OpenAI's hardware business'rotten to its core' in trade secret theft lawsuit The lawsuit also names io Products, the hardware company led by Jony Ive. Apple is suing OpenAI and two of its former employees who currently work at the AI company, for theft of its trade secrets. In a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday, Apple alleges extensive misconduct by the company it once partnered with, describing its hardware business as rotten to its core. The lawsuit also names io Products, the Jony Ive-led hardware startup acquired by OpenAI last year, as complicit in the trade secret theft. It doesn't mention Ive by name, but described the organization as complicit in a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level within OpenAI.

The iPhone-maker claims OpenAI encouraged poached Apple employees to bring over confidential presentations, secret prototypes, and key supplier details. Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its hardware chief on Friday for allegedly stealing the iPhone-maker's trade secrets, including unreleased parts and prototypes, confidential designs, and documents about stealth projects. The lawsuit accuses OpenAI chief hardware officer Tang Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and oversaw iPhone product design, and his colleagues at the AI company of encouraging people departing or considering leaving Apple to bring with them proprietary and unreleased technology. Tan allegedly helped coach recruits on how to evade Apple's data security protocols and directed them to bring confidential Apple parts to job interviews at OpenAI. "OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets," Apple says in the lawsuit, which was filed in US district court in San Jose.

I know a lot of people want to celebrate any stumble OpenAI makes, and rightfully so, but the imminent death of its Atlas browser isn't a sign of a company retreating from a competitive market. If you didn't catch the news yesterday, OpenAI announced, as part of the release of ChatGPT Work, that it would deprecate Atlas on August 9 . Coverage of the news treated it like OpenAI was giving up on the browser space entirely, with headlines like The ChatGPT browser is already dead and OpenAI is shutting down the ChatGPT Atlas browser only months after its release making the rounds. Naturally, people on social media followed suit. For instance, one Bluesky user Pavel took it as an opportunity to round up a number of other dead OpenAI initiatives.

Plus: OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited super app. The AI firm Anthropic has got the clearest glimpse yet at what's really going on inside large language models as they answer questions or carry out tasks. What they found ranges from the mundane to the unnerving. Researchers at the company built a tool called the Jacobian lens (or J-lens) and used it to uncover a hidden area, which they named the J-space, inside its flagship LLM, Claude. The J-space contains words related to the response a model is working on but may not ultimately produce. If Claude were a person (which it is not), you might say these hidden words reveal what's on its mind before it actually speaks.

PCWorld explores strategic AI delegation, emphasizing three key questions to determine which tasks are appropriate for AI assistance versus human decision-making. The guide matters for productivity-focused users seeking to leverage AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for tedious data compilation and repetitive tasks while avoiding over-reliance. Key recommendations include delegating boring, repeatable tasks like email management and voice memo transcription to AI, but retaining all final decision-making authority for yourself. You know what's harder than making decisions?

The move comes after Simo took significant medical leave. She will stay on as a part-time adviser. OpenAI's chief executive of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, is leaving her full-time role at the company and transitioning to become a part-time adviser. The move comes after Simo took a monthslong medical leave due to a worsening neuroimmune condition. "Three months ago, I had to go on medical leave after a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness I've lived with for seven years," Simo wrote in a post Thursday on X. "During that time, it became clear that the road to recovery would be much longer and more complex than I had anticipated--and that I needed to focus on it fully."

The company's long-awaited super app is here. Since the start of March, OpenAI has been publicly working on a desktop super app designed to bring together ChatGPT, its Codex coding agent and Atlas web browser under one roof. In April, the company began laying the groundwork for that project, and now it's taking its biggest step toward realizing that vision with the release of ChatGPT Work . OpenAI describes its latest offering as something of a general purpose productivity agent. Where Codex was designed primarily for coding projects, OpenAI says Work is here to help people with some of their most ambitious tasks.

PCWorld reports the new ChatGPT app launches for Mac with Windows version coming soon, featuring GPT-5.6 models and enhanced capabilities. The superapp introduces ChatGPT Work agent for complex projects, browser tabs, web publishing through'Sites' feature, and PC control functionality. GPT-5.6 offers three performance tiers (Sol, Terra, Luna) with access levels varying by subscription plan, targeting Claude Desktop's market position.

Silicon Valley is making a show of helping prepare the country for AI layoffs. In late March, I started receiving daily texts from the federal government about AI. " AI is changing how we work and live," one message read. "You might feel curious, skeptical, or unsure--that's normal." I had enrolled in an AI-literacy course from the Labor Department created to help workers succeed in the ChatGPT economy. The weeklong program, created in partnership with an AI start-up and delivered by text message, was supposed to equip Americans with "foundational AI skills," according to an agency press release.

OpenAI released its latest advanced AI model, called ChatGPT 5.6. OpenAI released its latest advanced AI model, called ChatGPT 5.6. Staggered release of ChatGPT 5.6 follows similar restrictions on rival firm Anthropic's latest AI models OpenAI released its latest advanced AI model, called ChatGPT 5.6, on Thursday after earlier delaying the public rollout over US government concerns about cybersecurity. The Trump administration had requested last month that OpenAI limit the release to a small group of government-approved users. OpenAI complied with the White House's request last month.