Elon Musk says he’s suing Apple for rigging App Store rankings

There’s a sore loser successful this popularity contest.

Elon Musk says that his artificial quality institution xAI “will instrumentality contiguous ineligible action” against Apple for allegedly manipulating its App Store rankings to the vantage of rival AI apps. In a bid of X posts connected Monday night, Musk suggested that Apple was “playing politics” by not placing either X oregon xAI’s Grok chatbot successful the App Store’s database of recommended iOS apps, and that helium had nary choice but to record a lawsuit.

“Apple is behaving successful a mode that makes it intolerable for immoderate AI institution too OpenAI to scope #1 successful the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk said. “Why bash you garbage to enactment either X oregon Grok successful your ‘Must Have’ conception erstwhile X is the #1 quality app successful the satellite and Grok is #5 among each apps?,” the xAI CEO asked Apple successful different post, which is present pinned to his profile.

Musk provided nary grounds for his claims, and it’s unclear if helium has made bully connected his threats and filed the suit yet. The Verge has reached retired to xAI, Apple, and OpenAI for comment.

At the clip of writing, ChatGPT is listed arsenic Apple’s apical escaped iPhone app successful the US, with Grok ranked arsenic the sixth. China’s DeepSeek AI concisely managed to instrumentality the apical App Store presumption from ChatGPT successful January, however, disproving Musk’s assertion that it would beryllium intolerable for different AI apps to bash so.

Accusations of meddling from Musk are ironic, fixed allegations astir alterations made to X aft helium acquired the institution successful 2022, past known arsenic Twitter. A probe survey successful 2024 suggested that X’s algorithm was manipulated to boost posts from Musk’s account. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Musk’s posts by sharing a Platformer study from 2023 that likewise recovered Musk had a strategy built to beforehand his X posts to the full platform’s userbase. In June, the “maximally truth-seeking” Grok chatbot was besides recovered to beryllium consulting Musk’s opinion earlier providing answers to arguable questions astir topics similar Israel and Palestine, US immigration, and abortion.

This isn’t the archetypal clip that Musk has beefed with Apple and OpenAI. Musk was an aboriginal laminitis astatine OpenAI, and previously targeted the AI startup via lawsuits and a unanimously rejected $97.4 cardinal buyout connection aft taking contented with its pivot to being a profit-driven business. Following OpenAI’s concern with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs past year, Musk threatened to prohibition Apple devices astatine his companies if OpenAI’s tech was fused with Apple’s OS.