Elon Musk has accused Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) of unfairly favoring OpenAI over AI competitors such as his startup xAI in its App Store, threatening to take legal action over what he alleges is an antitrust violation.
In a series of posts on his social media platform X on Monday, Musk accused Apple of only allowing OpenAI’s ChatGPT to rank first in mobile apps on its store.
“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,” he wrote. “xAI will take immediate legal action.”
Apple’s App Store “Top Free App” section is topped by ChatGPT, while xAI’s AI model Grok currently ranks 6th. Google's Gemini chatbot is ranked at 57th.
“Hey Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world…Are you playing politics? What gives?” Musk wrote.
Musk did not provide any evidence to support his allegations.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Musk’s claims in a post, stating: “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.”
Apple is yet to respond to the accusations.