Musk alleges that Apple is biased for pushing OpenAI on the App Store
Apple is now facing criticism for allegedly siding with OpenAI over rival AI firms on its App Store. In a recent round of arguments that spilled onto X, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, both co-founders of the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, accused each other of using dark tactics to gain an unfair competitive advantage.
Musk believes Apple is siding with ChatGPT and is pushing xAI and Grok out of the spotlight
Musk, who is the founder of Grok’s xAI, publicly alleged that Apple is guilty of an “unequivocal antitrust violation,” citing that Apple’s App Store works in a way that favors OpenAI and makes it impossible for other companies to reach the #1 position on the platform.
It’s important to note that OpenAI is currently in a partnership with Apple that allows the latter to use ChatGPT’s services across its product line.
Under Musk’s post, however, readers added context that earlier this year, China’s DeepSeek took the top spot, and later, Perplexity in India’s App Store. The Community Notes also added that both events occurred after the OpenAI–Apple partnership was announced on June 10, 2024.
In a later tweet, Musk called out Apple again, alleging that the company had put ChatGPT in “literally every list where they had editorial control.” He wrote, “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?“
To this, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded by stating that Musk had made a “remarkable claim,” and that X’s CEO is said to “harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”
Then, it all spilled out…
In the replies to this post, Musk claimed that the claim was baseless since Altman had more views than most of his own posts, given that he has 50 times the follower count. To which Altman replied, “skill issue.“
Apple has since refuted Musk’s claims and issued a statement to the BBC, stating that the App Store is “designed to be free and fair of bias.“
