Report: Apple Veteran Phil Schiller to Get an OpenAI Board Seat

Apple veteran Phil Schiller is set to be offered an observer role on OpenAI’s board, Bloomberg reported yesterday citing sources familiar with the sitution. Schiller’s position as a board observer will follow Apple’s partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, which will make its debut on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this fall.

Schiller is Apple’s former SVP of worldwide marketing, and he’s now responsible for leading the App Store and Apple Events. You may remember him from his “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass” comment when he officially introduced the infamous ‘trashcan’ Mac Pro back in 2013. Schiller also made headlines back in 2016 when he said Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 was about “courage.”

Phil Schiller will be joining Microsoft executive Dee Templeton on the OpenAI board, who is also a nonvoting observer. With Microsoft already having close ties with OpenAI after investing billions of dollars into the AI startup, you can imagine that the Redmond giant won’t be please see Schiller participate to OpenAI board meetings. A previous report suggested that Microsoft was actually worried about the impact an Apple/OpenAI partnership could have on its Azure infrastructure and the overall generative AI market.

As part of its multi-billion investment in OpenAI, Microsoft obtained an exclusive license on GPT-4 and all other OpenAI models, and the company has been leveraging OpenAI’s technology to create its various Copilot products. Apple, however, chose a different kind of partnership with OpenAI.

With Apple Intelligence, Apple has created its own AI models that will run locally to increase privacy. However, the personal intelligence system can also leverage larger server-based models for more complex requests. OpenAI’s ChatGPT will also be integrated into Siri and Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools, and users will be able to control when ChatGPT is used.

Apple is reportedly looking to integrate more third-party AI models including Google Gemini into Apple Intelligence. And according to Bloomberg, the company convinced OpenAI to not be paid anything for having ChatGPT integrated into Apple Intelligence. Apple reportedly argued that OpenAI could eventually make money from the millions of Apple Intelligence users that may eventually subscribe to paid ChatGPT plans.