Elon Musk’s App Store dispute could be set to shift what users are able to see and download from Apple.
This comes after Musk threatened the tech giant with a lawsuit on behalf of his AI startup company xAI.
The mogul accused Apple of being impartial and favoring OpenAI on the App Store.
Taking to his own social media X, formerly Twitter, Musk wrote: “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.”
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In another post, the Tesla boss wrote: “Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics?”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hit back at Musk, writing: “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.”
Musk was quite to respond with: “You got 3M views on your bulls*** post, you liar, far more than I’ve received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!”
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So, what knock-on effect could this have for the App Store?
First up, it could impact Apple’s ‘featuring’ sections as opposed to any app rankings.
Although Apple has already said that its ‘featuring’ parts of the app are based on ‘objective criteria’.
Could Apple face serious claims of favoritism?
Apple is currently in the process of integrating OpenAI tech into Apple Intelligence so it will need to toe the line carefully so as to not to show any signs of favoritism.
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This could include more neutral-sounding lists being curated in the App Store.
More enforcement on AI safety
It could lead to stricter rules around AI apps, including better safety filters, developer attestations, age gating.
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This might also mean that some apps could face being taken down if they don’t follow the rules.
Will this have any developer impacts over the coming months?
This could cause Apple to become more careful over which AI companies are being spotlighted to avoid being accused of bias.
In order to combat this, the firm might rotate different apps on the list more regularly.