OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently tops the list in the App Store’s ‘Top Free Apps’ section for iPhones in the United States.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, will sue Apple for allegedly giving its competitor OpenAI’s ChatGPT preferential placement in the App Store rankings.
Musk stated that xAI will “take immediate legal action” against Apple, accusing the iPhone maker of violating antitrust rules by blocking other AI developers from holding the top spot in its mobile app 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,” Musk stated on X, the social media platform he owns.
ChatGPT currently tops the list in the App Store’s “Top Free Apps” section for iPhones in the United States, while xAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) model, Grok, ranks fifth, and Google’s Gemini chatbot is placed 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 and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives?” Musk stated in a separate post.
The Epoch Times reached out to both Apple and OpenAI for comments but did not receive a response by publication time.
The two companies announced their partnership in June 2024, which allowed Apple to integrate ChatGPT into its devices, including enabling its voice assistant Siri to tap into the AI technology’s capabilities.
Musk has opposed the partnership between Apple and OpenAI, describing it as “an unacceptable security violation.” The Tesla CEO threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies’ premises at the time, although it is unclear whether the ban was ever enforced.
In April, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple violated a previous court order requiring it to change its App Store rules to allow greater competition among developers and referred the tech giant to federal prosecutors. Apple said it would comply with the order but disagreed with the court’s decision.
The ruling was issued as part of a legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games, the developer of popular video game “Fortnite,” which filed a lawsuit against Apple in August 2020 after it was removed from the App Store for providing users with an alternative payment option to Apple’s in-app purchases.
That same month, the European Commission fined Apple 500 million euros ($581 million) for violating the European Union’s Digital Markets Act by restricting options for customers on its App Store.
Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.
