Apple to 'Pay' OpenAI for ChatGPT Through Distribution, Not Cash

> Apple isn’t paying OpenAI as part of the partnership, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deal terms are private. Instead, Apple believes pushing OpenAI’s brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments, these people said.

Okay, I want to ask the optimists something. Who actually thinks Sam Altman is perfectly content to be "paid in exposure"?

Before you answer, remember that this is the Worldcoin founder we're talking about.

OpenAI has an early lead in the AI battle, and their ChatGPT brand is already a household name synonymous with LLMs for most people. This is the first time there’s been a real threat to Google’s monopoly in a decade.

Never mind they don’t have a profitable business model yet. OpenAI will pay a premium to Apple to keep their lead and remain the dominant brand in this new space in hopes they can someday supplant internet search. OpenAI seems to be at the point where they’ll burn billions in cash trying to join the ranks of the big tech monopolies. If they can reach Google’s status, they’ll be able to change ChatGPT from its “ten blue links” stage into something worse (but monetizable), but only if they can achieve dominant and defensive market share. Nobody seems to know how to pull off this last trick yet.

But in the meantime, a little competition in search (Google) is hugely beneficial to the largest gatekeeper of mobile users (Apple).

I'm very confused. If what OpenAI gets from that deal isn't cash flow, it is to either: 1. Condition users to use ChatGPT directly (outside Apple Intelligence) where they can either charge for a subscription, use your data or maybe use ads. However, the way I understand it Apple wants you to only interact with Apple Intelligence so I'm not sure how such conditioning could work.

2. If you don't use ChatGPT directly then the only thing I can think of is using your data to improve though that will go against everything that apple has built itself on in the last few years.

What else could be at play here other than Microsoft investing in a company that give one of their competitors a free service?

That's genius from Apple's pov and dumb from OpenAI's... why the hell do they need "exposure" when their ChatGPT product is already synonymous with LLM / "AI Search" in many (non-tech) peoples' minds.

I'm sure the data being handed over to ChatGPT will be far more valuable. Why get paid once when they can get a steady stream of data that they can exploit over and over again for the rest of our lives?