{"id":77195,"date":"2025-08-12T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T13:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77195\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T13:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T13:07:08","slug":"elon-musk-says-hes-suing-apple-for-rigging-app-store-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77195\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says he\u2019s suing Apple for rigging App Store rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk says that his artificial intelligence company xAI \u201cwill take immediate legal action\u201d against Apple for allegedly manipulating its App Store rankings to the advantage of rival AI apps. In a series of X posts on Monday night, Musk suggested that Apple was \u201cplaying politics\u201d by not placing either X or xAI\u2019s Grok chatbot in the App Store\u2019s list of recommended iOS apps, and that he had no choice<\/a> but to file a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cApple 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,\u201d Musk said<\/a>. \u201cWhy do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your \u2018Must Have\u2019 section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?,\u201d the xAI CEO asked Apple in another post<\/a>, which is now pinned to his profile.<\/p>\n

Musk provided no evidence for his claims, and it\u2019s unclear if he has made good on his threats and filed the lawsuit yet. The Verge has reached out to xAI, Apple, and OpenAI for comment.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, ChatGPT is listed as Apple\u2019s top free iPhone app in the US, with Grok ranked as the sixth. China\u2019s DeepSeek AI<\/a> briefly managed to take the top App Store position from ChatGPT in January, however, disproving Musk\u2019s claim that it would be impossible for other AI apps to do so.<\/p>\n

Accusations of meddling from Musk are ironic, given allegations about alterations made to X after he acquired the company in 2022, then known as Twitter. A research study in 2024 suggested that X\u2019s algorithm was manipulated<\/a> to boost posts from Musk\u2019s account. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a> responded to Musk\u2019s posts by sharing a Platformer report from 2023<\/a> that similarly found Musk had a system built to promote his X posts to the entire platform\u2019s userbase. In June, the \u201cmaximally truth-seeking\u201d Grok chatbot was also found to be consulting Musk\u2019s opinion<\/a> before providing answers to controversial questions around topics like Israel and Palestine, US immigration, and abortion.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time that Musk has beefed with Apple and OpenAI. Musk was an early founder at OpenAI, and previously targeted the AI startup<\/a> via lawsuits and a unanimously rejected<\/a> $97.4 billion buyout offer after taking issue with its pivot to being a profit-driven business. Following OpenAI\u2019s partnership with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs last year, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies if OpenAI\u2019s tech was fused with Apple\u2019s OS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says that his artificial intelligence company xAI \u201cwill take immediate legal action\u201d against Apple for allegedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[182,517,8543,28,11,3,1283,172,8282,4119],"class_list":{"0":"post-77195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-apps","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-openai","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-twitter-x","17":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}