Musk threatens to sue Apple for not featuring X or Grok among top apps
text_fields
Elon Musk, the billionaire behind SpaceX, Tesla, and X, has announced plans to sue Apple for failing to include X and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot program among its top recommendations in the App Store.
Musk made the statements on X late Monday, saying, “Hey @Apple App Store, 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? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, owns Grok.
Musk went on to say that “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. xAI will take immediate legal action.”
He provided no further details, Associated Press reported.
Apple, which has previously been accused of antitrust crimes, had no immediate comment. A federal judge recently ruled that Apple breached a court injunction in an antitrust dispute brought by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite.
Regulators of the 27-nation European Union fined Apple 500 million euros for violating competition rules by barring app developers from directing users to cheaper options outside of the App Store.
Last year, the EU fined the US tech behemoth nearly $2 billion for unfairly favouring its own music streaming service by prohibiting rivals like Spotify from informing consumers how to pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps.
TikTok was the most popular app in the Apple App Store as of early Tuesday, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube, and Bumble. Open AI's ChatGPT was ranked seventh.