Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is waging a legal jihad against Apple and OpenAI. He’s leading this charge, not just personally, but through his companies, xAI and X. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, accuses the tech giants of colluding to maintain monopolies in the smartphone and generative AI markets. This move follows mounting bipartisan concerns about competition in these fast-moving industries.
Likewise, Elon Musk created quite a stir at the Viva Technology conference this past June 16, 2023. This year’s event was held at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center just outside of Paris. Recently at the Future.org Regenerate 2023 event, he outlined his work and the goals of his startup xAI, a company formed to help develop beneficial artificial intelligence technologies. He highlighted xAI’s competitive challenges because of the alleged unfair practices from Apple and OpenAI.
The lawsuit claims Apple and OpenAI have engaged in an “anticompetitive scheme”. The new plan is to stop their competitors in the AI field. Musk explicitly stated his concerns regarding Apple’s behavior in a post on X, asserting that it “is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
The complaint filed by Musk’s companies alleges that unless a court intervenes, “defendants will continue to thwart competition, and their competitors, like plaintiffs, will continue to suffer the anticompetitive consequences.” An expensive war Musk is suing the big tech firm as the AI arms race between markets escalates. Rival chatbot applications such as DeepSeek and Perplexity have recently rocketed to number one in the App Store charts.
Despite having no discernible grounds to do so, Musk has publicly courted lawsuits against Apple. He argues that they have engaged in an “unambiguous antitrust violation.” This latest legal maneuver is further evidence of his commitment to fostering competition across the artificial intelligence and broader technology industries. He’s constantly picking fights with industry titans.