Apple has denied Elon Musk’s accusations that it favors OpenAI in App Store rankings and makes it impossible for other companies involved in artificial intelligence to reach the top. In a statement sent to Bloomberg, Apple said the App Store is “designed to be fair and unbiased.” A company representative explained that the App Store offers “thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and lists curated by experts based on objective criteria.” He added: “Our goal is to provide a safe search experience for users and valuable opportunities for developers, working with many of them to increase the visibility of apps in rapidly evolving categories.”
xAI founder Elon Musk accused Apple of “clear antitrust violations” for favoring OpenAI in a post on X, warning that his company would “immediately take legal action.” In a separate post, in addition to his threat, he asked Apple why it “refuses to place X or Grok in the ‘Must Have’ section.” X, he said, is “number one among news apps in the world,” and Grok ranks fifth among all apps. “Are you playing politics? What does that mean?” he continued.
Musk did not provide any evidence to support his allegations. It is also worth noting that the Chinese app DeepSeek, which uses artificial intelligence, topped Apple’s free app rankings in January, surpassing even ChatGPT. As noted in Musk’s post, added a few hours after its publication, the Perplexity app topped the overall rankings in the Indian App Store in July. Both apps were able to top their rankings after Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership last year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also responded to Musk’s accusations. He said it was an “amazing statement,” considering that he had heard accusations that Musk was manipulating “X to benefit himself and his companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.” In response, Musk wrote: “Altman the fraud lies as easily as he breathes.”
