Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence.
Apple and OpenAI have “locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing,” the lawsuit said.
Apple has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into its operating system for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Musk has been sharply critical of OpenAI and its rapid growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) space despite being one of its co-founders.
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Musk cut ties with the company in 2018 after he was unable to persuade its other leaders to put him in charge of a for-profit OpenAI entity or merge with Tesla.
In an interview on The Free Press podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” Weiss noted that Musk has likened Altman to the “Little Finger” character who was an antagonist in the “Game of Thrones” series and that the xAI founder said he doesn’t trust Altman to lead a company that controls the world’s most powerful AI.
“I think it’s because he wants the most powerful AI in the world to be controlled by him,” Altman told Weiss. “And, again, I’ve seen Elon’s attacks to many other people, many friends of mine — everyone gets their period of time in his spotlight. But this all seems like standard behavior from him.”
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Musk had threatened to sue Cupertino, California-based Apple earlier this month, saying in a post on his social media platform X that Apple’s behavior “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
OpenAI’s ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in the months following its launch in late 2022.
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Musk’s xAI acquired X in March for $33 billion to enhance its chatbot training capabilities. Musk has also integrated the Grok chatbot into vehicles made by his electric automobile company Tesla.
xAI was launched less than two years ago and competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI as well as with Chinese startup DeepSeek.
Following some acrimony between Apple and OpenAI related to app store issues with ChatGPT, the two companies announced they were partnering in June 2024 to integrate some ChatGPT features into iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
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