Apple rejects Elon Musk’s App Store bias claims

Apple rejected Elon Musk’s accusations that his application shop stifles the competition, insisting that she is “designed to be free and just bias”.

The owner of X Musk threatened Apple with legal action after having said that it had made it “impossible” that applications compete with Chatgpt-Maker Openai in the store

He also described the boss of Openai Sam Altman as a “liar”-after Altman said that Musk used his platform to “benefit himself and his own businesses”.

The row is the last flash point of what is a quarrel ongoing between the billionaires which co -founded Openai – but which now competes fiercely after Musk left the company.

Apple announced a partnership with Chatgpt in June 2024 – but there is no Apple suggestion promotes one application on the other, and several rival applications of AI such as Deepseek and Perplexity have exceeded the tables of the App Store since then.

In a declaration given to Bloomberg Apple said: “We present thousands of applications via graphics, algorithmic recommendations and organized lists selected by experts using objective criteria.”

In a subsequent post, Musk was again aimed at Apple, asking the company why it would not promote X – or its AI Grok application – in the “must have” section of the App Store.

“X is the application of new n ° 1 to the world and Grok is n ° 5 among all the applications,” he said in an article now pinned to his profile X.

Chatgpt is currently the most downloaded free application in the United Kingdom, with Grok a nearly third. X does not make the top 40.

It seemed to draw the attention of Altman, who linked a tech newsletter platformers report which claimed that Musk had made his own personal positions more important in people’s flows.

The quarrel between Musk and Altman has, over time, encompassed a series of prosecution, discharges by e-mail and excavations on social networks.

Their rivalry can be traced for a decade, with the now public conviction of Musk that Optaai, under the direction of Altman, abandoned the principles that he and others used to find it in 2015.

The company was created with the intention of building the general artificial intelligence (AG) – IA which can perform any task of which a human being is capable – but by making its technology open and promising to “benefit from humanity”.

Openai was also created as a non -profit company, which means that it would not aim to earn money, but in 2019, he established a for -profit arm which, according to Musk, was contrary to his original mission.

Musk argued in its trial in March 2024 that the company had rather focused on “maximizing profits” for its main Microsoft investor.

And while he unexpectedly abandoned his trial last year, Openai then filed a counter-action against him in April.

He said that the owner of the X had started “non-stop” in “bad faith tactics” to try to slow down the development of the company’s AI.

Openai also said that Musk was not motivated by the preservation of the founding mission of the company – but rather by its “own agenda”.

And the quarrel did not stop with words and legal action. In February, Musk shocked to try to buy the company for $ 100 billion (74 billion pounds sterling) – an offer rejected by the Openai board of directors.

The BBC approached Apple to comment.