August 16, 2025 | 03:50 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - ELON Musk has accused Apple of manipulating its App Store rankings to the advantage of rival apps. According to him, his AI company, xAI, "will take immediate legal action" against Apple. He made these accusations through a series of posts on X on Monday, August 11, 2025.
According to Musk, Apple is "playing politics" by not including the Grok chatbot from X and xAI in the list of recommended iOS apps. He emphasizes that he has no choice but to file a lawsuit. “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," Musk said in his post on X, as quoted from The Verge.
“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?” asked the xAI CEO in another post now pinned to his profile.
Musk did not provide evidence for the accusations, and it is not yet clear whether he has actually filed a lawsuit.
At the time of writing this article, ChatGPT is ranked top in the free iPhone app category in the US App Store, while Grok is in sixth position. Last January, China's DeepSeek AI briefly surpassed ChatGPT in the first position, refuting Musk's claim that no other AI app could reach that position.
The accusations of interference by Elon Musk against Apple are considered ironic. This is because Musk himself faced similar accusations regarding changes made to X after he acquired the platform in 2022, when it was still called Twitter. A study in 2024 revealed that the X algorithm was manipulated to increase the visibility of Musk's account posts.
Musk's feud with Apple and OpenAI is not new. As one of the early founders of OpenAI, Musk once filed a lawsuit and made a $97.4 billion acquisition offer. The offer was rejected after he questioned OpenAI's decision to transition into a profit-oriented company. Last year, OpenAI's partnership with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad, and Mac prompted Musk to threaten to ban the use of Apple devices throughout his companies if OpenAI's technology was installed on Apple's operating system.
According to PCMag, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Musk's claims about the App Store rankings by saying, "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," he said in a post on X.
Altman referred to accusations that Musk altered the X algorithm in 2023. He cited a report from Platformer, which stated that Musk asked the platform to display his posts more frequently, after President Joe Biden's posts about the Super Bowl at that time were more popular than Musk's posts.
Musk responded by saying, "You got 3M views on your bullshit post, you liar, far more than I’ve received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!" he wrote.
He also openly supported the statement of X's Product Head accusing Altman of manipulating the product for personal gain. The X Product Head wrote, "Perhaps it is you who is manipulating your products to your benefit, by putting warnings on every link to a competitor?" Musk then shared a screenshot showing the warning message from ChatGPT for external links.
Apple has not yet responded to the accusations by Elon Musk.
Editor’s Choice: Elon Musk Accuses Sam Altman and Apple of AI Market Monopoly
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