Tech billionaire Elon Musk has accused Apple of acting like a monopoly by manipulating its App Store rankings, threatening legal action in response, according to CNBC. Musk claimed that Apple's practices unfairly disfavor AI apps made by companies other than OpenAI, including his own xAI.
"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 posted on X, per CNBC. "xAI will take immediate legal action."
In 2024, Apple and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a partnership aimed at integrating the AI chatbot into "Apple experiences" on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
As a result, Musk claimed, Apple has unfairly elevated ChatGPT in App Store rankings and its list of "Must Have" apps.
"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?" Musk asked in a follow-up post, according to CNBC. "Are you playing politics?"
Apple did not respond to CNBC's request for a comment. However, OpenAI head Sam Altman did clap back in a post of his own.
"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 wrote on X, per CNBC.
Musk's posts were hardly the first time that Apple has faced accusations of antitrust violations, and Musk's companies have been involved in multiple lawsuits in recent years as well, including a one earlier this month over Tesla Robotaxi safety disclosures.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice joined 16 state or district attorneys general to sue the iPhone maker over its alleged monopolistic practices, claiming that "Apple exercises its monopoly power to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others," the department said in a statement.
In April, a federal court found that Apple had violated court orders demanding that the company make significant changes to its practices involving the highly profitable App Store and referred the case to federal prosecutors.
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Absolutely 👍 "For the reasons set forth herein, the Court finds Apple in willful violation of this Court's 2021 injunction which issued to restrain and prohibit Apple's anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing," the court ruled at the time. "Apple's continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated."
Were Musk to bring a lawsuit based on his online allegations, it likely would take years to resolve.
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