Elon Musk has declared that his artificial intelligence firm, xAI, will sue Apple, alleging that the tech behemoth may have violated antitrust laws by manipulating App Store rankings in favour of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk made these remarks on Tuesday after observing that his apps, such as Grok and X, do not appear in Apple’s promotional sections despite their high performance rankings.
“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.”
“xAI will take immediate legal action,” said Elon Musk on X on Tuesday.
Apple’s 2024 agreement to integrate ChatGPT into Siri and Apple Intelligence
Apple’s 2024 agreement to integrate ChatGPT into Siri and Apple Intelligence suppresses competitors while providing OpenAI with exclusive algorithmic boosts, prime placement, and curated promotion.
Even though xAI’s app Grok has millions of active users, it is not included in lists of “Must Haves” despite ranking fifth in U.S. downloads.
“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 and Grok is #5 among all apps?”
“Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know,” Musk queried Apple in another post.
This action is against Section 2 of the Sherman Act since it abuses dominant power to keep competitors out, limit consumer choice, and keep entry barriers unnecessarily high.
While sharing a screenshot of Apple’s top six ranked AI-powered apps, Musk claimed that despite being the most intelligent AI in the world on the most difficult tests and having just won the coding competition, Grok is not even mentioned by Apple under the category of “AI”.
He stated, “Grok is the smartest AI in the world on the toughest tests and just came first by far in coding, but is not mentioned at all under “AI” by Apple!”
In another post on Tuesday, Musk stated, “Apple is the gateway to the Internet for half of America. They are making it impossible for any other AI company to succeed by relentlessly promoting OpenAI in every way possible!”
OpenAI’s CEO’s response to Elon Musk
However, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded by criticising Musk and implying that he also manipulates rankings on his platform, X.
He stated, “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.”