Musk Accuses Altman and Apple of Conspiracy

From Co-founders to Competitors

In 2015, Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI with the goal of creating AI for the good of humanity as a non-profit. However, their visions for the company began to split when the company realized it would need "billions of dollars per year" to succeed. As a result, a for-profit structure became necessary. Discussions about this change began in late 2017. 

During this time, Musk reportedly wanted to merge OpenAI with his company, Tesla. He also wanted to have "majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO." These demands were rejected, as the company felt it was "against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI."

In the end, Musk left the company in 2018. OpenAI stated that Musk, who had contributed less than $45M to the non-profit, claimed that their "probability of success was 0." He then started his own AI company, xAI, to compete with them.

The Apple App Store Spat

This feud recently escalated when Musk took to his social media platform, X, to accuse Apple of favoring OpenAI in its App Store. This came after Apple announced it would integrate ChatGPT features into its devices. Musk claimed Apple's actions were “an unequivocal antitrust violation" and threatened immediate legal action.

Musk's complaint centered on the fact that his company's AI chatbot, Grok, was not at the top of the App Store rankings and not placed in the “Must Have” section, while ChatGPT was. In a post on X, he wrote, "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 Claims are Unfounded

Musk made these claims despite how other AI sites have reached the top of the App Store rankings. Notably, DeepSeek was in the top spot of the app in January. More recently, Perplexity was at the top spot in India, beating out both OpenAI and Grok. 

Additionally, Grok has been involved with several different controversies that would seem to justify not placing it in the “must have” section. This includes calling itself MechaHitler, implying the benefits of a second Holocaust in July, and other antisemetic content. Another controversy came in a new feature for Grok called “Imagine”, where users were able to generate pornographic images of celebrities with minimum guardrails of usage and exposure for children. 

Altman responded to Musk on X, calling his accusations surrounding antitrust 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." Altman further stated how he hoped that a lawsuit from Musk would result in counter-discovery because people “would love to know what’s been happening.”