Tech mogul Elon Musk announced on the 11th that his artificial intelligence company xAI will sue Apple, accusing the tech giant of giving preferential treatment to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the App Store rankings.
In a post on the x platform, Musk stated that Apple’s actions make it impossible for any AI company other than OpenAI to reach the top of the free charts in the App Store, calling it a “clear case of anti-competitive behavior.”
Currently, in the “Top Free Apps” chart in the US iPhone App Store, ChatGPT is ranked first, xAI’s AI model Grok is fifth, and Google’s Gemini is 57th.
Musk also questioned in another post why Apple refuses to include x or Grok in the “Essentials” section, and suspected whether Apple is “playing politics.”
In June, Apple announced a collaboration with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Apple devices, allowing Siri to directly utilize it. Musk expressed opposition at the time, calling it “unacceptable security violation,” and threatened to ban the use of Apple devices by his companies, although it is not clear whether this threat will be carried out.
In April, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple had violated a previous court order that required changes to App Store rules to promote developer competition, and referred the matter to federal prosecutors. Apple stated it would comply with the order but objected to the ruling.
This ruling stemmed from a lawsuit between Apple and the popular video game “Fortnite” developer Epic Games. Epic sued Apple in August 2020 for being removed from the App Store for offering options outside of Apple’s payment system.
Furthermore, in April, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million for limiting customer choices in the App Store and violating the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
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