Apple has refuted allegations from Elon Musk accusing the company of giving preferential treatment to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in App Store rankings.
The tech giant insisted its platform operates “fair and free of bias.”
Musk, who owns X and xAI’s chatbot Grok, alleged that ChatGPT’s top ranking on the App Store was due to favoritism, claiming his apps were being sidelined despite strong performance. He argued that although X leads the News category and Grok 4 has been made free for all users, Grok still sits at fifth overall and second in Productivity, while ChatGPT maintains the top spot.
“The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias,” Apple said in a statement cited by multiple outlets.
The company explained that its rankings and recommendations rely on charts, algorithms, and editorial curation based on objective criteria, with the goal of ensuring “safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers.”
Musk has criticised Apple for allegedly making it “impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1,” suggesting that ChatGPT’s position is not purely driven by organic demand.
Apple has prominently featured ChatGPT in App Store editorial content and integrated OpenAI’s technology into its Apple Intelligence rollout, embedding it directly into Siri and writing tools.
Musk has threatened “immediate legal action” over the matter, though no lawsuit has yet been filed.
The dispute comes as Apple faces an antitrust case from the U.S. Department of Justice and continues its appeal in a legal battle with Epic Games, which resulted in a court order to revise some App Store rules.
Meanwhile, ahead of last week’s launch of GPT-5, OpenAI announced substantial bonus payouts for roughly one-third of its workforce — about 1,000 employees.
GPT-5 is now available to all users, with Plus subscribers receiving increased usage limits and Pro subscribers gaining access to GPT-5 Pro, offering extended reasoning capabilities for more comprehensive and precise responses.