Elon Musk’s xAI filed a lawsuit towards Apple and OpenAI on Monday, accusing the businesses of behaving like monopolies and claiming Apple deprioritized ChatGPT rivals like Grok within the App Retailer.
“It is a story of two monopolists becoming a member of forces to make sure their continued dominance in a world quickly pushed by essentially the most highly effective know-how humanity has ever created: synthetic intelligence,” the lawsuit alleges. “Working in tandem, Defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to take care of their monopolies and forestall innovators like X and xAI from competing.”
Grok is presently ranked third within the App Retailer without cost productiveness apps—behind solely ChatGPT and Gmail. The ‘uncensored’ chatbot can also be built-in into Musk’s social platform X, which is the primary free information app within the App Retailer.
The lawsuit takes specific concern with Apple’s integration of ChatGPT into the iOS working system final yr. “Which means that if iPhone customers need to use a generative AI chatbot for key duties on their units, they haven’t any alternative however to make use of ChatGPT, even when they would favor to make use of extra modern and imaginative merchandise like xAI’s Grok,” the lawsuit claims. Whereas Apple has not introduced integrations with different chatbots, the OpenAI partnership was not named as an unique at launch. Nothing in Apple’s working system prevents iPhone customers from accessing chatbots like Grok.
“This newest submitting is according to Mr Musk’s ongoing sample of harassment,” mentioned OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wooden in an announcement to WIRED. Apple didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The impact of this alleged collusion is that buyers have much less alternative, xAI claims. “These results available on the market—much less competitors, much less scale essential to compete, much less funding, and fewer innovation—in the end hurt shoppers by means of decrease high quality, much less alternative, and better costs than would exist within the but-for world with out Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct,” the lawsuit reads.
Musk was a founding member of the OpenAI group earlier than he left in 2018, ultimately founding a rival AI agency within the type of xAI. An electronic mail to xAI’s press line requesting touch upon the lawsuit bounced again.
At a dinner in San Francisco earlier this month, a journalist requested OpenAI CEO Sam Altman how he thinks concerning the relationship between OpenAI and Apple. “Possibly they’ve determined, look, we’re not going to compensate for fashions—there’s sufficient competitors,” a journalist mentioned.
“Is there a spot you need to be to be their major companion?”
Altman didn’t reply the query immediately. “Apple’s my favourite tech firm that’s not OpenAI,” he mentioned. OpenAI is presently working with famed former Apple designer Jony Ive on an AI {hardware} product. Altman mentioned on the dinner the product could be a “new computing paradigm,” although he declined to share particulars of the undertaking.
This isn’t the primary time Musk has sued OpenAI. In 2024, Musk filed a grievance towards the ChatGPT maker, alleging the corporate had deserted its founding mission of creating AI to profit humanity by pursuing a for-profit construction. Whereas the corporate was initially designed as a nonprofit, it later created a for-profit subsidiary for fundraising functions. The corporate is within the strategy of transitioning that subsidiary to turn out to be a public profit company—a transfer that’s crucial to OpenAI receiving billions of {dollars} from SoftBank.
