Elon Musk, the owner of X, has threatened to sue Apple, saying the company has made it “impossible” for apps to compete with OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, in the App Store.
Following Altman’s assertion that Musk exploited his platform to “benefit himself and his own companies,” he labeled OpenAI CEO Sam Altman a “liar.”
The dispute is the most recent development in the long-running conflict between the billionaires who co-founded OpenAI but now actively compete with one another after Musk departed the company.
In June 2024, Apple announced a partnership with ChatGPT; however, there is no indication that Apple favors one app over another, and since then, a number of competing AI apps, including DeepSeek and Perplexity, have topped the App Store charts.
Following an interview from BBC.
Musk criticized Apple once more in a subsequent article, questioning the company on why it would not list X or its AI program Grok in the program Store’s “Must Have” section.
He said in a post that is currently pinned to his X profile that “X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps.”
Grok is a close third behind ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in the UK right now. The top 40 does not include X.
Altman appeared to take notice of this and sent a link to a Platformer tech newsletter piece that asserted Musk had pushed his own X postings higher in users’ feeds.
Over time, the conflict between Altman and Musk has involved numerous lawsuits, social media jabs, and email leaks.
Their conflict dates back ten years, with Musk publicly believing that OpenAI had abandoned the values upon which he and colleagues founded the company in 2015 under Altman’s direction.
The company was founded with the goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that can carry out every task that a human can. However, it promised to “benefit humanity” by releasing its technology open-source.
Also founded as a non-profit organization, OpenAI had no intention of turning a profit. However, in 2019, it added a for-profit division, which Musk said went against the company’s initial goals.
In his complaint filed in March 2024, Musk claimed that the company had been concentrating on “maximizing profits” for Microsoft, its biggest investor.
In addition, OpenAI filed a countersuit against him in April after he abruptly dropped his complaint last year.
