Billionaire Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Tesla, and X, has announced his intention to sue Apple. Musk claims that Apple's App Store has unfairly excluded X and its Grok AI chatbot app from its list of top recommended apps. On Monday, Musk posted on X, "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? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know". Grok is owned by xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence startup.
He further stated that Apple's behavior "makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach 1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation". Musk concluded by saying that xAI "will take immediate legal action," though he did not provide further details. Apple has not yet commented on the matter.
Past cases on Apple
The company has faced several antitrust allegations in recent years. A federal judge recently found that Apple violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite. In April, the European Union fined Apple 500 million euros for breaking competition rules by preventing app makers from directing users to cheaper options outside the App Store. Last year, the EU also fined the company nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals like Spotify.
As of early Tuesday, the top apps in Apple's App Store were TikTok, Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube, and Bumble. OpenAI's ChatGPT was ranked seventh.
Meanwhile, Apple is set to introduce the recently unveiled GPT-5 model from OpenAI, which is being hailed as the company’s top model to date, excelling in coding capabilities, accuracy, safety, and more. This advanced model will be accessible to users with the launch of the upcoming iPhone 17 Series.
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