X proprietor Elon Musk has threatened Apple with authorized motion after claiming it had made it “unimaginable” for apps to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its App Retailer.
He known as OpenAI boss Sam Altman a “liar” – after Altman claimed Musk used his platform to “profit himself and his personal corporations”.
The row is the most recent flashpoint in what’s an ongoing feud between the billionaires who co-founded OpenAI – however now fiercely compete after Musk left the agency.
Apple introduced a partnership with ChatGPT in June 2024 – however there isn’t any suggestion Apple favours one app over the opposite, and a number of other rival AI apps resembling DeepSeek and Perplexity have topped the App Retailer charts since then.
The BBC has approached Apple for remark.
In a later submit Musk took purpose at Apple once more, asking the agency why it could not promote X – or its AI app Grok – within the “Should Have” part of the App Retailer.
“X is the #1 information app on this planet and Grok is #5 amongst all apps,” he stated in a submit now pinned to his X profile.
ChatGPT is at the moment essentially the most downloaded free app within the UK, with Grok a detailed third. X doesn’t make the highest 40.
This appeared to attract the eye of Altman, who linked to a report by tech publication Platformer which claimed Musk had made his personal private X posts extra distinguished in folks’s feeds.
The feud between Musk and Altman has, over time, encompassed a slew of lawsuits, electronic mail dumps and social media digs.
Their rivalry might be traced again a decade, with Musk’s now public perception that OpenAI, beneath Altman’s management, deserted the ideas he and others used to discovered it in 2015.
The agency was created with the intention of constructing synthetic common intelligence (AGI) – AI that may carry out any job {that a} human being is able to – however by making its expertise open-source and promising to “profit humanity”.
OpenAI was additionally arrange as a not-for-profit firm, that means it could not purpose to earn money, however in 2019 it established a for-profit arm which Musk felt was antithetical to its unique mission.
Musk argued in his March 2024 lawsuit that the agency had as an alternative been specializing in “maximising earnings” for its main investor Microsoft.
And whereas he unexpectedly dropped his lawsuit final 12 months, OpenAI then filed a counter-suit in opposition to him in April.
It claimed the X proprietor had engaged “continuous” in “bad-faith techniques” to try to decelerate the corporate’s AI improvement.
OpenAI has additionally claimed Musk just isn’t motivated by preserving the corporate’s founding mission – however moderately by his “personal agenda”.
And the feud has not stopped at simply phrases and authorized motion. In February, Musk made a shock transfer to try to purchase the corporate for $100bn (£74bn) – a bid rejected by OpenAI’s board.
