Topline
Elon Musk attacked Apple in a series of posts on X, alleging the iPhone-maker was refusing to highlight his social media platform and AI chatbot Grok on the App Store, and boosting his rival and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI’s products instead.
In an X post on Monday evening, Musk tagged Apple and wrote: “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?”
In a follow-up post, the billionaire ratcheted up his threat against the tech giant and alleged: “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.”
Musk then noted his company, xAI, will take “immediate legal action,” without offering further details on when.
The xAI owner later wrote: “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!”
In a series of follow-up posts made early on Tuesday, the billionaire boosted reshared posts mocking Apple and took several shots at the iPhone-maker, even claiming the company behaved as if it were “owned by OpenAI.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shot back against Musk’s posts, tweeting: “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.” Altman then shared reporting by tech outlet, The Platformer, on how Musk was boosting the visibility of his own posts on X. In an apparent retort against Musk’s legal threat, Altman wrote: “I hope someone will get counter-discovery on this [Musk’s alleged boosting of his own posts], I and many others would love to know what's been happening.”