Elon Musk’s xAI filed a lawsuit in opposition to Apple and OpenAI on Monday, accusing the businesses of behaving like monopolies and claiming Apple deprioritized ChatGPT rivals like Grok within the App Retailer.
“This can be a story of two monopolists becoming a member of forces to make sure their continued dominance in a world quickly pushed by probably 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 stop innovators like X and xAI from competing.”
Grok is presently ranked third within the App Retailer totally free productiveness apps—behind solely ChatGPT and Gmail. The ‘uncensored’ chatbot can be built-in into Musk’s social platform X, which is the primary free information app within the App Retailer.
The lawsuit takes explicit difficulty with Apple’s integration of ChatGPT into the iOS working system final yr. “Which means if iPhone customers wish to use a generative AI chatbot for key duties on their gadgets, they haven’t any selection however to make use of ChatGPT, even when they would favor to make use of extra progressive 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 selection, xAI claims. “These results available on the market—much less competitors, much less scale essential to compete, much less funding, and fewer innovation—finally hurt shoppers by decrease high quality, much less selection, 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, finally 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 make amends for fashions—there’s sufficient competitors,” a journalist mentioned.
“Is there a spot you wish to be to be their main associate?”
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 in opposition to 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 means of transitioning that subsidiary to grow to be a public profit company—a transfer that’s crucial to OpenAI receiving billions of {dollars} from SoftBank.
