ChatGPT's run inside Siri was, by OpenAI's own account, a flop.
Court filings from OpenAI's ongoing legal fight with Elon Musk's xAI show that by the time xAI sued OpenAI, the company already considered its ChatGPT integration with Apple Intelligence to be "dramatically" and "persistently" underperforming. Apple added ChatGPT as an opt-in Siri feature in December 2024, a setup that required digging through several menus in Settings to switch on. OpenAI's expert witness, Dr. Catherine Tucker, calculated the share of AI users who reached ChatGPT through Apple Intelligence and found it matched OpenAI's internal read: minimal usage. OpenAI cited those numbers to argue its effect on rivals like xAI was "indisputably de minimis."
That's a striking admission from a company that spent 2024 selling its Apple tie-up as a major distribution win. Large portions of the filing are redacted, so it's unclear whether clunky opt-in menus, a weak Siri, or simple user preference for OpenAI's own app explain the shortfall - but the numbers suggest Apple Intelligence itself struggled to get anyone's attention before Siri AI arrived.
Whether ChatGPT fares any better wired into the revamped Siri AI is anyone's guess, but for now the deal reads as a case study in how little a high-profile integration is worth if nobody bothers to turn it on.