Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology convention on the Porte de Versailles exhibition heart in Paris on June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Elon Musk‘s xAI sued Apple and OpenAI on Monday, accusing the pair of an “anticompetitive scheme” to thwart artificial intelligence rivals.
The lawsuit, filed by Musk’s AI startup xAI and its social community enterprise X, alleges Apple and OpenAI have “colluded” to keep up monopolies within the smartphone and generative AI markets.
Musk’s xAI acquired X in March in an all-stock transaction.
It accuses Apple of deprioritizing so-called tremendous apps and generative AI chatbot opponents, reminiscent of xAI’s Grok, in its App Store rankings, whereas favoring OpenAI by integrating its ChatGPT chatbot into Apple merchandise.
“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,” in line with the grievance, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
An OpenAI spokesperson stated in a press release, “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.”
Representatives from Apple did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
The Tesla CEO launched xAI in 2023 in a bid to compete with OpenAI and different main chatbot makers.
Musk earlier this month threatened to sue Apple for “an unequivocal antitrust violation,” saying in a publish on X that the corporate “is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
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.”
An Apple spokesperson beforehand stated that its App Store was designed to be “fair and free of bias,” and that the corporate options “thousands of apps” utilizing a wide range of alerts.
Apple final 12 months partnered with OpenAI to combine ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad, Mac laptop computer and desktop merchandise.
Several customers replied to Musk’s publish on X by way of its Community Notes function saying that rival chatbot apps reminiscent of DeepSeek and Perplexity had been ranked No. 1 on the App Store after Apple and OpenAI introduced their partnership.
The lawsuit is the newest twist in an ongoing clash between Musk and Altman. Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman in 2015, earlier than leaving the startup in 2018 resulting from disagreements over OpenAI’s course.
Musk sued OpenAI and Altman final 12 months, accusing them of breach of contract by placing industrial pursuits forward of its authentic mission to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”
In a counterclaim, OpenAI has alleged that Musk and xAI engaged in “harassment” by litigation, assaults on social media and within the press, and thru a “sham bid” to purchase the ChatGPT-maker for $97.4 billion designed to hurt the corporate’s enterprise relationships.
