Musk accused Apple of underrating Grok in the App Store and threatened to sue

Elon Musk announced that his company xAI is preparing to sue Apple over alleged antitrust violations related to app ratings in the App Store, CNBC reports.

The reason was that the Grok chatbot, created by xAI, did not appear in the Must-Have Apps section, despite being ranked fifth among all free apps. Musk accused Apple of creating conditions under which only OpenAI could occupy the first place in the App Store, calling it an "unquestionable antitrust violation."

He also questioned why Apple isn't promoting X (formerly Twitter), which he says is the world's #1 news app, and Grok. In his posts, Musk suggested that the company was "playing politics."

Apple has not yet commented.

This conflict comes against the backdrop of Apple's partnership with OpenAI last year to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Musk was sharply critical of the move at the time, even threatening to ban Apple devices from his companies if the integration took place at the operating system level.

Musk and OpenAI have been in a long-running dispute. The entrepreneur, who co-founded the company in 2015, left it in 2018, and is now suing it and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of abandoning their original mission — to create AI for the benefit of humanity.

Altman also commented on the situation, calling Musk's statements "striking" given the accusations that Musk himself is manipulating the X platform to his own advantage and to the detriment of competitors.