Musk threatens Apple and calls OpenAI boss a liar as feud deepens

X proprietor Elon Musk has threatened Apple with authorized motion after claiming it had made it “impossible” for apps to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its App Store.

He known as OpenAI boss Sam Altman a “liar” – after Altman claimed Musk used his platform to “benefit himself and his own companies”.

The row is the newest flashpoint in what’s an ongoing feud between the billionaires who co-founded OpenAI – however now fiercely compete after Musk left the agency.

Apple introduced a partnership with ChatGPT in June 2024 – however there is no such thing as a suggestion Apple favours one app over the opposite, and a number of other rival AI apps equivalent to DeepSeek and Perplexity have topped the App Store charts since then.

The BBC has approached Apple for remark.

In a later publish Musk took goal at Apple once more, asking the agency why it will not promote X – or its AI app Grok – within the “Must Have” part of the App Store.

“X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps,” he said in a post now pinned to his X profile.

ChatGPT is at present essentially the most downloaded free app within the UK, with Grok a detailed third. X doesn’t make the highest 40.

This appeared to attract the eye of Altman, who linked to a report by tech publication Platformer which claimed Musk had made his personal private X posts extra distinguished in individuals’s feeds.

The feud between Musk and Altman has, over time, encompassed a slew of lawsuits, electronic mail dumps and social media digs.

Their rivalry might be traced again a decade, with Musk’s now public perception that OpenAI, beneath Altman’s management, deserted the rules he and others used to discovered it in 2015.

The agency was created with the intention of constructing synthetic normal intelligence (AGI) – AI that may carry out any activity {that a} human being is able to – however by making its expertise open-source and promising to “benefit humanity”.

OpenAI was additionally arrange as a not-for-profit firm, which means it will not goal to earn cash, however in 2019 it established a for-profit arm which Musk felt was antithetical to its authentic mission.

Musk argued in his March 2024 lawsuit that the agency had as an alternative been specializing in “maximising profits” for its main investor Microsoft.

And whereas he unexpectedly dropped his lawsuit final yr, OpenAI then filed a counter-suit in opposition to him in April.

It claimed the X proprietor had engaged “non-stop” in “bad-faith tactics” to try and slow down the company’s AI development.

OpenAI has additionally claimed Musk will not be motivated by preserving the corporate’s founding mission – however relatively by his “own agenda”.

And the feud has not stopped at simply phrases and authorized motion. In February, Musk made a shock transfer to try to purchase the corporate for $100bn (£74bn) – a bid rejected by OpenAI’s board.