Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023.<\/p>\n
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters<\/p>\n
Two of Elon Musk<\/a>‘s companies sued Apple<\/a> and OpenAI<\/a> on Monday, accusing the pair of an “anticompetitive scheme” to thwart artificial intelligence rivals. <\/p>\n The lawsuit, filed by Musk’s AI<\/a> startup xAI<\/a> and his social media platform X, alleges Apple and OpenAI have “colluded” to maintain monopolies in the smartphone and generative AI markets. <\/p>\n It also accuses Apple of deprioritizing so-called “super apps” and generative AI chatbot competitors, such as xAI’s Grok, in its App Store rankings, while favoring OpenAI by integrating its ChatGPT chatbot into Apple products.<\/p>\n “In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. <\/p>\n Musk earlier this month threatened<\/a> to sue Apple for “an unequivocal antitrust violation,” saying in a post on X that the company “is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”<\/p>\n Musk’s xAI acquired<\/a> X in March in an all-stock transaction. The billionaire launched xAI<\/a> in 2023 in a bid to compete with OpenAI and other leading chatbot makers.<\/p>\n An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement: “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.”<\/p>\n Representatives from Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n After Musk threatened to sue Apple, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded: “This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”<\/p>\n An Apple spokesperson previously said its App Store was designed to be “fair and free of bias,” and that the company features “thousands of apps” using a variety of signals. <\/p>\n Apple last year partnered<\/a> with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad, Mac laptop and desktop products. <\/p>\n Several users replied to Musk’s post on X via its Community Notes feature saying that rival chatbot apps such as DeepSeek and Perplexity were ranked No. 1 on the App Store after Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership.<\/p>\n The lawsuit is the latest twist in an ongoing clash<\/a> between Musk and Altman. Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman in 2015, before leaving the startup in 2018 due to disagreements over OpenAI’s direction.<\/p>\n