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.
Elon Musk attacked Apple for not featuring his AI chatbot Grok on the ‘Must Have’ section of Apple’s App Store.
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Key Facts
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.”
Chief Critic
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.”
What Do We Know About Apple’s Partnership With Openai?
Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI in June last year to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers. The announcement was made alongside Apple’s unveiling of its own AI system, Apple Intelligence. The company said it would allow its users to tap into ChatGPT’s capabilities for various tools, including its voice assistant Siri. The integration came at a time when Wall Street was concerned about Apple’s slow progress on the AI front. When the ChatGPT integration launched on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, it was powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o language model. Apple told several outlets that it plans to integrate OpenAI’s latest GPT-5 model when the newest versions of its operating systems—iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and MacOS Tahoe—launch later this year.
