I would assume Apple purchased dedicated hardware capacity at their own expense, which lets them run isolated instances of OpenAI’s models “free”. It would make no sense otherwise!
>Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT — their IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply for users who choose to connect their account.[0]
Sounds like they are just sending regular requests to 'Open'AI.
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/06/introducing-apple-int...