Musk threatens Apple lawsuit over alleged OpenAI favoritism
Elon Musk has ignited a new tech controversy, accusing Apple of unfairly favoring OpenAI, a direct competitor to his artificial intelligence venture, xAI. Late Monday, Musk escalated his criticism on his social media platform, X, threatening an “unequivocal antitrust violation” lawsuit against the iPhone maker over its alleged preferential treatment. This latest broadside follows Apple’s recent announcement of a partnership to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot into its suite of products, a move that appears to have intensified long-standing tensions between the tech titans.
Musk’s frustration appears to stem from the perceived performance of his own AI chatbot, Grok, which xAI released a new version of last month. Despite his earlier boasts on X about Grok’s positive rankings within Apple’s App Store, Musk now claims Apple is deliberately impeding his company’s reach. He specifically questioned why X, which he asserted is the world’s leading news app, and Grok, ranked fifth overall among apps, were not featured in Apple’s “Must Have” section. Hours later, he directly accused Apple of creating an environment where “it is impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store,” vowing “immediate legal action” from xAI.
This isn’t the first time Musk has resorted to legal threats against rivals or critics, a common tactic that sometimes culminates in formal lawsuits but often dissipates after a flurry of social media posts. As of Tuesday afternoon, no lawsuit from xAI had been filed in federal court, and representatives for both xAI and Apple declined to comment on the matter. Adding a layer of skepticism to Musk’s claims, X’s Community Notes feature, a fact-checking tool run by users, appended a note to one of his posts, highlighting that other chatbot applications not affiliated with OpenAI have indeed achieved the top spot in the App Store.
The current dispute is set against a backdrop of prior skirmishes between Musk and both Apple and OpenAI. In 2022, Musk publicly criticized Apple, alleging the company threatened to remove his social media app from its App Store following his relaxation of content moderation policies, which Apple’s guidelines typically prohibit for content involving hateful speech. That particular disagreement was later resolved after a meeting between Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, described by Musk as a “misunderstanding.”
Musk’s relationship with OpenAI, which he co-founded, is even more complex and fraught. He departed the company in 2018, citing fundamental disagreements over its strategic direction. Last year, he took legal action against OpenAI and two of its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, alleging they had violated the company’s founding contract by prioritizing commercial interests over its initial mission of developing AI for the public good. OpenAI’s current chief executive, Sam Altman, has consistently denied these allegations. This deep-seated history of contention underscores the intensity of Musk’s current accusations against Apple’s partnership with his former venture.