The wars to get to the top of app store rankings are getting serious.
Elon Musk has alleged that Apple is making it impossible for AI apps other than ChatGPT to reach the top of the App Store rankings. “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,” he posted on X.
Musk seemed to be hinting that xAI’s ChatGPT competitor Grok was somehow being artificially downgraded in the App Store rankings to keep ChatGPT in first position. Last year, Apple and ChatGPT had announced a partnership to integrate ChatGPT within Apple’s devices.
Musk also shared a screenshot of how a pop-up that said “Try the new flagship model by GPT-5” showed up right as one opened the App Store. “Anti-trust behaviour by Apple!” Musk said.
Musk also shared other examples of Apple promoting ChatGPT in its app store.
Musk shared an article link which said that Apple was paying OpenAI through “distribution” to be able to use its services within its products. “Apple is the gateway to the Internet for half of America. They are making it impossible for any other AI company to succeed by relentlessly promoting OpenAI in every way possible!” Musk said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t directly respond to the accusations, but made a counter accusation of his own. “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,” he posted on X. Altman didn’t defend Apple’s actions, but instead said that Elon Musk’s X also did the same thing to competitors.
This caused X’s newly-hired Head of Product Nikita Bier to respond to Altman, claiming that ChatGPT in turn was censoring links to X. “Perhaps it is you who is manipulating your products to your benefit, by putting warnings on every link to a competitor?” he posted.
As these allegations and counter-allegations fly, ChatGPT is the number one app on the App Store, in spite of a mini user boycott following the the release of a relatively weak GPT-5 and reduced rate limits for paid users. Meta’s Threads is at number four, while xAI’s Grok is in sixth place.
Tech companies for years have been accused of prioritizing their own products at the expense of competitors on their platforms. Google was once accused of prioritizing its own results over those of Yelp. Amazon has been accused of copying products for its own brands, and then showing them ahead of those of competitors on its website. Facebook has similarly been promoting videos posted within Facebook much more than links to rivals like YouTube. Even X has been accused of demoting links to other sites on X and platforms like Substack, while prioritizing posts that let users stay within the app.
As such, there are few hands which might be clean in the misuse of large platforms. But Musk is suggesting that Apple and OpenAI are together colluding to keep ChatGPT in first place. It appears that Musk wants to capitalize on OpenAI’s stumble with GPT-5, and is heavily pushing Grok with new features like Imagine to become a replacement. It remains to be seen if Musk actually sues Apple, but Musk is showing that he isn’t afraid to publicly take on big companies as he tries to get Grok to the top of the app charts.