The integration of ChatGPT into Apple’s voice assistant Siri is apparently drawing little interest from Apple device owners. As revealed by court filings in the legal dispute between OpenAI and Elon Musk’s company SpaceXAI, the AI developer views usage of the interface as persistently weak.
Sobering Numbers from Court Filings
According to the unsealed records, OpenAI characterized the Apple integration as “persistently underperforming” through March 2026. The previous year, the AI company even internally described the situation as dramatically bad. Disappointment ran so deep at times that OpenAI considered taking legal action against the iPhone maker even before later disputes with Apple arose, after the rollout starting in 2024 fell significantly short of targets.
The documents came to light as part of a lawsuit brought by SpaceXAI. Musk’s AI firm alleges anticompetitive behavior by OpenAI, arguing that its own Grok language model was disadvantaged in the App Store compared to ChatGPT. While Apple is no longer part of this lawsuit and proceedings against OpenAI continue, the filings offer rare insight into the commercial relationship between Apple and OpenAI.
Setup Hurdles and Lingering Issues with Siri
For OpenAI, the muted response carries significant economic weight. Apple’s global base of around 1.5 billion active iPhone users promised vast reach. However, under the agreement, no money changed hands from Apple to OpenAI—meaning the compute costs incurred for processed requests were shouldered entirely by the AI company.
One suspected reason for user reluctance is that many consumers simply neglected to enable the ChatGPT feature within Siri or link ChatGPT in the UI across iPhone, iPad, or Mac. In addition, the integration suffered from the broader user perception of Siri itself, which struggled to meet expected engagement following the launch of Apple Intelligence due to various shortcomings. While Apple streamlined configuration for Siri AI with the release of iOS 27 and macOS 27, it remains unclear whether this has led to measurable improvements for OpenAI.
Sources: Heise – News
