- Elon Musk is threatening Apple with a lawsuit for allegedly playing favorites with OpenAI.
- Musk claims OpenAI's ChatGPT sits at the top of the App Store's "Must Have" section, despite Grok ranking 5th among all apps.
- Musk says that Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company to reach the #1 spot in the App Store.
Elon Musk is threatening to sue Apple for allegedly favoring OpenAI’s ChatGPT in App Store rankings. Musk calls it an “unequivocal antitrust violation” and preparing immediate legal action against Apple.
Musk shared a series of posts on X today, claiming that Apple is playing favorites with OpenAI. According to Musk, “Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.”
Why is Elon Musk Threatening to Sue Apple?
To add some context, Musk’s AI company, xAI, recently rolled out Grok’s companion chatbot, followed by the controversial Grok Imagine tool, which can generate AI images and videos. Later, Grok Imagine was made free for all users.
This helped the Grok app climb to the 29th position in the App Store rankings, according to App Figures. Earlier today, xAI also made Grok 4 free for everyone, the company’s most advanced AI model. This only helped the app reach the 5th spot in the global rankings.
Musk is upset that Apple is not giving Grok a higher placement in the App Store while ChatGPT remains at the top. In one of Elon’s previous posts, he questioned Apple: “Why do you refuse to include either š¯•¸ or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when š¯•¸ is the number one news app in the world and Grok ranks fifth among all apps?”
Frustrated over Apple’s alleged favoritism toward OpenAI, Musk is threatening the company with a lawsuit. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, replied to Elon’s post saying, “This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”
So it seems the situation is heating up, and could end up in court. While Apple has a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT features into Apple Intelligence, there is no indication that this partnership is influencing App Store rankings.
