Musk accuses Apple of 'conspiring' to suppress AI chatbot Grok

Io Dodds and Michael Liedtke, The Independent

Elon Musk has launched a new legal assault against his xAI rival OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT maker of colluding with Apple, to freeze his own products out of the market. In a 61-page antitrust complaint filed in federal court in Texas on Monday, lawyers for the tech tycoon claimed the two companies had broken the law by making a deal to integrate ChatGPT into Apple's iPhone operating system. They also accused Apple of illegally suppressing Musk's competing chatbot Grok in its App Store rankings and deliberately slow-rolling the approval process for new updates. The lawsuit doubles down on Musk's recent rants on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in which he complained about Grok not ranking higher in Apple's charts and claimed without evidence that this must be the result of a conspiracy. It marks the latest twist in Musk's years-long feud with OpenAI, which he originally helped bankroll but has now come to regard as a bitter rival.

"This is a tale of two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance in a world rapidly driven by the most powerful technology humanity has ever created: artificial intelligence," claims the lawsuit, which was filed by X and its parent company xAI. "Working in tandem, defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing. "Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop defendants from perpetrating their anticompetitive scheme and to recover billions in damages." A spokesperson for OpenAI said the lawsuit was "consistent with Mr. Musk's ongoing pattern of harassment". Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk was among the 11 original co-founders of OpenAI, which was initially formed as a non-profit with a mission to ensure that any future powerful A.I. would benefit all of humanity.

But as OpenAI became ever more commercial, Musk began to accuse it of betraying its founding principles and even threatening civilization itself by putting profits over safety. The Tesla and SpaceX boss is already suing OpenAI over its plans to restructure itself to focus more on profits, while OpenAI has countersued Musk, for unfair competition and interference with its business. The crux of Monday's lawsuit revolves around Apple's decision to use ChatGPT as an AI-powered "answer engine" on the iPhone when its own in-house voice assistant Siri couldn't meet users' needs. Apple has insisted that this partnership is not exclusive, and reports indicate the company is also in similar discussions with Google. But Musk's lawsuit repeatedly described the deal as "exclusive", depicting it as a veiled conspiracy to stifle competition, during a technological shift that could prove as revolutionary as the 2007 release of the iPhone.

The complaint portrays Apple as a company that was "blindsided" by the rise of AI and now views it as an "existential threat", prompting the company to collude with OpenAI in an attempt to protect the iPhone franchise that has long been its biggest moneymaker. The lawsuit offers little evidence of Apple demoting Grok in its App Store rankings, beyond the fact that Grok does not rank as highly as Musk apparently believes it should. It also cited previous testimony by Apple's former App Store boss Philip Shoemaker, who told Congress in 2020 that the company often uses its complicated and "arbitrary" rules "as a weapon against competitors". As of Monday, neither OpenAI nor Apple had answered Musk's new lawsuit in court. But Musk's initial allegations on X earlier this month met a withering response from OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman.

"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," said Altman. His post linked to a 2023 report by the tech newsletter Platformer, alleging that Musk had built a special system to boost his own posts to the top of X users' feeds. Some of Musk's allegations accusing Apple of trying to shield the iPhone from do-everything "super apps" — such as the one Musk has long been trying to create with X — echo an antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple last year by the US Department of Justice. Apple's own AI shortcomings may be helping drive more usage of ChatGPT on the iPhone, providing OpenAI with invaluable data that's unavailable to Grok and other would-be competitors because it's currently an exclusive partnership.

The alliance has provided Apple with an incentive to improperly elevate ChatGPT in the AI rankings of the iPhone's app store, the lawsuit alleges. Other AI apps from DeekSeek and Perplexity have periodically reached the top spot in the Apple app store's AI rankings in at least some parts of the world since Apple announced its deal with ChatGPT. The lawsuit doesn't mention the potential threat that ChatGPT could also pose to Apple and the iPhone's future popularity. As part of its expansion efforts, OpenAI recruited former Apple designer Jony Ive to oversee a project aimed at building an AI-powered device that many analysts believe could eventually mount a challenge to the iPhone.