An individual holds a smartphone displaying the iOS Retailer web page for Grok, with the Apple brand seen within the background.
Cheng Xin | Getty Photographs Information | Getty Photographs
Elon Musk on Monday threatened Apple with authorized motion over alleged antitrust violations associated to rankings of the Grok AI chatbot app, which is owned by his synthetic intelligence startup xAI.
“Apple is behaving in a way that makes it unimaginable for any AI firm moreover OpenAI to achieve #1 within the App Retailer, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take quick authorized motion,” Musk wrote in a put up on his social media platform X.
Apple didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for remark.
“Why do you refuse to place both X or Grok in your ‘Should Have’ part when X is the #1 information app on this planet and Grok is #5 amongst all apps? Are you taking part in politics?” Musk stated in one other put up.
Apple final yr tied up with OpenAI to combine ChatGPT into its iPhone, iPad, Mac laptop computer and desktop merchandise. Musk at the moment had stated that “If Apple integrates OpenAI on the OS degree, then Apple gadgets might be banned at my corporations. That’s an unacceptable safety violation.”
Previous to his authorized threats towards Apple, Musk had celebrated Grok surpassing Google because the fifth prime free app on the App Retailer. When contacted by CNBC, xAI didn’t instantly reply to a request for additional data on a possible lawsuit.
CNBC confirmed that ChatGPT was ranked No. 1 within the prime free apps part of the American iOS retailer, and was the one AI chatbot in Apple’s “Should-Have Apps” part. The App Retailer additionally featured a hyperlink to obtain OpenAI’s new flagship AI mannequin, ChatGPT-5 on the prime of its “Apps” part.
OpenAI on Thursday introduced GPT-5, its newest and most superior large-scale AI mannequin, following xAI’s launch of its latest chatbot, Grok 4, final month.
Musk has an ongoing feud with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015. The billionaire stepped down from its board in 2018, 4 years after saying that AI was “doubtlessly extra harmful than nukes.”
He’s now suing the Microsoft-backed startup, and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they deserted OpenAI’s founding mission to develop synthetic intelligence “for the good thing about humanity broadly.”
Robert Keele, who headed the authorized division at xAI, introduced final week that he had left the corporate to spend extra time along with his household. In his announcement, Keele additionally acknowledged “daylight between our worldviews” with Musk.
In response to Musk’s antitrust threats towards Apple, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated in an X put up: “This can be a exceptional declare given what I’ve heard alleged that Elon does to govern X to profit himself and his personal corporations and hurt his rivals and other people he does not like.”
This isn’t the primary time Apple has been challenged on antitrust grounds. In a landmark case, the Division of Justice final yr sued the corporate over fees of working an iPhone ecosystem monopoly.
In June, a panel of judges additionally denied an emergency utility from Apple to halt the modifications to its App Retailer ensuing from a ruling that the corporate might now not cost a fee on fee hyperlinks inside its apps, nor inform builders how the hyperlinks ought to look.
— CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Lora Kolodny contributed to this story.