AI news, 14 July: Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI sparks a public Musk-Altman feud
Apple sues OpenAI, igniting a public Musk-Altman feud. Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on 11 July accusing it of trade-secret theft after OpenAI hired more than 400 former Apple staff, according to CNBC. The filing quickly turned personal: Elon Musk and Sam Altman spent the weekend trading public jabs on X, with Musk amplifying the lawsuit and criticising OpenAI's hiring practices while Altman pushed back, a spat that dominated tech-industry conversation into 12 July. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is also pursuing broader strategic countermeasures against OpenAI beyond the courtroom, while Bloomberg notes the case underscores how central on-device AI has become to Apple's upcoming chip generations. The dispute remains unresolved.
OpenAI launches full-duplex voice assistant "GPT-Live." OpenAI introduced GPT-Live, a voice assistant designed to listen, reason and speak at the same time rather than waiting for conversational turns, an approach the company calls full-duplex. Reported capabilities include:
- Real-time translation during a live conversation
- Web search performed mid-conversation
- Handing off tasks to other AI agents
It is one of the more natural-sounding voice interfaces released so far, though independent reviewers have not yet tested it outside company demonstrations.
Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro rumoured for next week. Industry reports this week point to Google preparing to release Gemini 3.5 Pro around 17 July, with leaked specifications suggesting a two-million-token context window and a new "Deep Think" reasoning mode for subscribers to Google's premium tier. Google has not officially confirmed either the date or the specifications, and commentators note that launch-week benchmark claims typically need independent verification before they can be trusted.
New York Times seeks court sanctions against OpenAI. The New York Times, joined by other major publishers, has filed a motion asking a federal court to sanction OpenAI for allegedly failing to hand over key evidence in their ongoing copyright lawsuit. The publishers argue OpenAI has been deceptive about how its systems were trained on, and use, copyrighted news content. A ruling could influence how courts handle evidence disputes in the wider wave of copyright cases against AI developers, though no decision has been made yet.
AI dominates a record half-year for venture funding. U.S. venture capital funding reached $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, up 30% on all of 2025 combined, according to PitchBook data cited this week, with AI startups accounting for 86% of that total. Analysts say the concentration of money in AI infrastructure and agent companies, even as funding for non-AI sectors stays flat, is creating an increasingly two-speed startup economy.