Musk threatens to sue over Apple's App Store rankings
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The news: Elon Musk said that his artificial intelligence company xAI will sue Apple over allegedly favouring other AI competitors in its App Store.
The context: In a series of posts on his social media platform X, Musk said that Apple only permits OpenAI’s ChatGPT to hold the top ranking for mobile applications and that xAI planned to take immediate legal action over what he called a breach of antitrust regulations.
“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” he wrote.
OpenAI ‘s ChatGPT is a major rival of Musk’s xAI and its CEO Sam Altman has been embroiled in a long-standing public feud with Musk over each other’s businesses. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI but departed in 2018.
xAI’s AI model, Grok, currently holds 6th ranking in the Apple App Store’s ‘Top Free Apps’ sections in the US, while ChatGPT holds top spot.
“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…Are you playing politics? What gives?” Musk wrote in another post.
Apple has previously faced legal challenges with regard to its App Store, with the Federal Court of Australia ruling that both Apple and Google engaged in anti-competitive conduct by misusing market power in how their app stores were run earlier on Tuesday.
In April, a California court ruling that Apple violated a court order to fix its App Store to improve competition in app downloads and payment methods. The European Commission also fined Apple €500 million ($890 million) for breaching a digital competition law by restricting app developers from steering users toward cheaper options outside the App Store.
The sources: Elon Musk X , FT
