In a post shared on social media platform 𝕏 (formerly Twitter) over the weekend, Elon Musk claimed that Apple was unfairly skewing App Store metrics to keep all Artificial Intelligence apps besides OpenAI’s ChatGPT from reaching the #1 spot and threatened legal action.
The post stated:
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 was clearly referring to his xAI-owned AI app Grok, which struggles to reach the #1 spot in the App Store.
The far-fetched accusation was viewed more than 25 million times, but Community Notes on the platform set the record straight, noting that DeepSeek hit #1 in the App Store in January of 2025 and Perplexity reached #1 in the App Store on July 18th, 2025.
While Apple has indeed partnered up with OpenAI to incorporate some of ChatGPT’s features into Siri responses and Apple experiences, it’s worth noting that both aforementioned achievements happened after the announcement of said partnership, which seems to completely undermine Musk’s unfounded accusation.
Having said that, Apple responded to Musk’s remarks in a comment to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Tuesday, and it validates what most of us already knew:
The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias. We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria. Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney ironically butted in, making a joke about featuring Fortnite, which only just recently returned to the App Store following a multi-year court battle between Apple and Epic Games.
In a separate rant, Musk appeared to complain that neither 𝕏 nor Grok appear in the App Store’s Must Have apps section, while ChatGPT does appear there.
As it turns out, perhaps App Store users just generally prefer the user experience of ChatGPT. After all, the monthly cost of the subscription is a whopping $10 less. That couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it, could it?