Elon Musk’s xAI may be entering a new lawsuit against Apple on the grounds that Apple favors ChatGPT and others, but Apple denies any favoritism in the App Store.
Complaints around Apple’s App Store and its partnership with OpenAI started on Monday, with Elon Musk sharing and quote posting multiple accounts citing fairness. It wasn’t long before Elon Musk stated that xAI would bring a lawsuit against Apple over antitrust control of the App Store, but whether it has or will remains to be seen.
About a day later, Apple shared its response to the accusations, citing that it doesn’t play favorites with the App Store. The statement was shared with Bloomberg and simply says the App Store “is designed to be fair and free of bias.”
“We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria,” Apple said in an email. “Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”
Musk initially called Apple’s App Store and its features sections “playing politics.” While the initial complaints mentioned both X and Grok, Musk has shifted his attention fully to Grok’s place in this situation.
It seems that Apple’s partnership with OpenAI and Sam Altman, Musk’s former partner and project, has caused some annoyance. The accusation basically centers around the idea that ChatGPT is frequently number one on the App Store, shown in featured categories, and even currently has a big widget promoting ChatGPT 5.
Grok never gets that kind of editorial support on the App Store, and it usually sits around number 5 in the free app charts. Apple’s statement emphasizing safety may be related to Grok’s recent “Mecha Hitler” meltdown and its various features like “spicy mode.”
Love triangle: Apple, Musk, Altman
Musk’s irritation quickly shifted from Apple to Altman himself after a brief exchange on X. Altman says that OpenAI will stay focused on making great products.
This is 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. https://t.co/HlgzO4c2iC
— Sam Altman (@sama) August 12, 2025
Musk’s relationship with Apple and Altman has been put on display before. He previously shared misinformation about Apple and OpenAI’s deal, likely in irritation about not being offered similar.
More drama previously erupted when Musk complained about Apple not using his satellite service, not advertising on X (they’ve since returned under government pressure), and even fought against Apple’s 30% commission.
After Musk got angry at Altman, he used the attention on his threatened lawsuit to promote Grok. His pinned post at the time of publication asks users to show friends and family to use Grok, and in another, he asks users to leave 5-star reviews on the App Store.
Regardless of Musk’s massive 224 million followers and desperate pleas for attention, Grok still remains at number five in free apps, and X is down at number 38 on Tuesday evening. That is more of a sign of the waning power that X holds versus any direct influence from Apple.
