Antitrust claim rocks app store ranking

Elon Musk accuses Apple of an antitrust violation for allegedly favoring OpenAI in App Store AI rankings, signaling a tense clash over platform power.

Apple Faces Antitrust Claims Over App Store Rankings Favoring OpenAI

Elon Musk published a post accusing Apple of an unequivocal antitrust violation for allegedly biasing the App Store AI rankings in favor of OpenAI. The dispute follows xAI’s Grok 4 release, its image generator Grok Imagine, and a wave of updates that have helped the Grok app rise in rankings. xAI then made Grok 4 free globally, helping it climb further in overall rankings and in the Productivity category. OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to sit near the top of Apple’s charts, despite these moves. Apple has also featured ChatGPT in editorial content and integrated OpenAI within its Apple Intelligence rollout, setting a backdrop for Musk’s accusation.

This episode highlights how app store dynamics can become a front in broader competition between tech giants. When a platform is both gatekeeper and promoter, questions arise about fairness, transparency, and how rankings are determined. The clash also taps into a longer debate about bias in digital ecosystems where policy, market power, and public perception meet. The stakes go beyond a single ranking and touch on how users discover AI tools and how developers compete for attention.

Highlights

The coming days will test how far rhetoric travels before action materializes.