OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit back at Elon Musk over claims that Apple is favouring ChatGPT on its App Store and not allowing any rival app to get to the top app rankings on the platform. Altman took a dig at Musk and the way he runs his social media platform X to “benefit himself and his own companies” while harming competitors he doesn’t like.
“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,” Altman wrote in his X post.
“I hope someone will get counter-discovery on this, I and many others would love to know what’s been happening. But OpenAI will just stay focused on making great products,” the OpenAI CEO added.
Altman also shared the link to an article showcasing how Musk has manipulated the X algorithm to show users his tweets first.
Elon Musk threatens to sue Apple
Earlier in the day, Musk had threatened to sue Apple over how it ranks apps on its App Store.
“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action,” Musk wrote in a post.
The App Store rankings have become yet another flashpoint between the two biggest figures in the AI world who run rival AI platforms. OpenAI had released its latest GPT-5 model powering ChatGPT last week while Elon Musk’s xAI had launched its new Grok 4 model last month.
Musk had gone on to say that his company’s AI model was still the best available despite the GPT-5 launch. Subsequently, Musk made his Imagine feature for video and image generation free for all users while also bringing Grok 4 models out from behind the paywall.
Meanwhile, Altman has been making constant changes to GPT-5 as the new model did not receive the reception from users that OpenAI would have anticipated. The removal of older OpenAI models from ChatGPT has significantly irked many users, with some threatening to cancel their subscriptions if these are not brought back.
