Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Apple Over App Store Ratings

Elon Musk threatens to sue Apple over App Store ratings. He claims that the company is violating antitrust laws by favoring ChatGPT from OpenAI in the App Store rankings, which harms his Grok AI assistant. "Apple behaves in a way that no AI company, except for OpenAI, can take the top spot in the App Store, which is a clear violation of antitrust laws. xAI will take immediate legal action," Musk wrote in a post on X (Twitter). Musk did not provide evidence to support his claims. Meanwhile, other X users noted that DeepSeek reached the top spots in the App Store back in January — long after the announcement of Apple's partnership with OpenAI, which allows Siri to redirect complex queries to ChatGPT. The tech entrepreneur also criticized Apple for not featuring X and Grok in the "Must-Have" section of the App Store. Currently, ChatGPT holds the top position among free apps, while Grok is in sixth place. Google's Gemini chatbot is in 57th place.

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman called Musk's statements "impressive" and accused him of manipulating his own social network for the benefit of companies. Musk's statements came amid increasing pressure from regulators and competitors on Apple regarding its practices in the App Store. In April, a U.S. judge ruled that Apple violated a court order to open the platform for greater competition and referred the company for criminal investigation for contempt of court, in light of the case filed by Epic Games regarding Fortnite. In the same month, the European Union fined Apple €500 million ($587 million) for violating the Digital Markets Act, particularly for restrictions that prevent developers from offering users cheaper alternatives outside the App Store. Apple is currently appealing this fine.