If you weren’t paying close attention to Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote, it was easy to miss one of the more notable stories out of the event. For a conference where it aims to show itself as an innovator, this year Apple looked like it was out of new ideas. Whether it was digging up old design concepts or sherlocking even more third-party apps, we saw a company dependent on the work of others. But nowhere was that dependence more striking than the one Apple now has with OpenAI.
For many of the new Apple Intelligence features the company announced on Monday, it was quick to note users could turn to OpenAI’s models, instead of its own in-house systems, to carry out a task. Don’t like the portraits of your friends Image Playground is generating? ChatGPT can help. How about the analysis offered by Visual Intelligence? If Apple’s model isn’t doing it for you, ChatGPT can assist there, too.
Those are just two examples. There are others. OpenAI’s models are also available through the updated Shortcuts app, and, perhaps most notably, in the new version of Apple’s Xcode app development suite. In fact, according to Engadget managing editor Cherlynn Low, who was on the ground in Cupertino, the news that ChatGPT would come built directly in Xcode got one of the loudest cheers of the presentation.
It all felt like an admission by Apple that its own AI models, even the more private, on-device one it would make available to developers through a new framework, aren’t up to snuff. Apple’s dependence on OpenAI is not new. ChatGPT has been an integral part of Apple Intelligence since the start, but what is surprising is how much deeper that dependence has become.
Before Monday, we all knew the company was behind in the AI race. At WWDC 2025, Apple offered few reassurances it would catch up anytime soon. For instance, it had almost nothing to say about the more personalized Siri it previewed at last year’s conference.
“As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,” said Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering. “This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.”
The time frame of “in the coming year” would suggest the new Siri may not arrive before the start of 2026 at the earliest. Six months to a year is an eternity in the tech world, especially when Apple’s competitors are moving so quickly.
As if to punctuate things, OpenAI announced on Saturday it had begun rolling out an update to Advanced Voice that gives ChatGPT more subtle intonation, realistic cadence and expressiveness. Those are all upgrades that Siri could use.
Of course, the irony that Apple should choose to turn to OpenAI for help in the AI race is one almost certainly not lost on anyone at either company.
In May, OpenAI announced it was buying Jony Ive’s io hardware startup (for a reported $6.5 billion) to support its ambition to build an AI device. In an interview with The New York Times about the acquisition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t explicitly mention Ive’s former employer, but he was obviously thinking about Apple and the iPhone throughout the conversation. “We’ve been waiting for the next big thing for 20 years,” he said at one point. “We want to bring people something beyond the legacy products we’ve been using for so long.”
The fact the AI devices we’ve seen so far, including the AI Pin and R1, haven’t been a success, does not mean Apple is safe from disruption. For one, the pedigree of OpenAI and Jony Ive (even if you include misses like the MacBook Pro with its terrible butterfly keyboard) surpass that of Humane and Rabbit. One of the people that is now working for OpenAI as part of the io deal include Evans Hankey, who was Apple’s head of hardware design for three years after Ive’s departure from the company.
You could make the argument that Apple has found itself in similar situations before and come out unscathed. For years, the company has depended on Google to offer access to a search engine to its users (and Maps before that), but this feels different to me. What’s going on in the AI industry doesn’t play to the company’s usual strengths. The technology is moving faster than Apple’s annual release schedule, with new, more powerful models being announced almost every week. It’s not a space where the company can rely on its usual strategy of waiting for others to work out the wrinkles before it dives in itself.
It’s too early to know if Apple’s partnership with OpenAI will ultimately hurt the tech giant, but it’s safe to say OpenAI isn’t content with being merely a supporting player. Apple is still one of the wealthiest companies in the world, with billions of dollars of cash on hand — but being so dependent on OpenAI is a rare sign of vulnerability in a crucial part of the tech industry.
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