Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple and OpenAI over ChatGPT integration in iPhone

Elon Musk’s xAI has filed a sweeping 61-page antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, targeting Apple and OpenAI over what it calls an unlawful and exclusionary competitive advantage granted to ChatGPT.

The complaint alleges that Apple’s exclusive integration of OpenAI’s model into Siri and Apple Intelligence unfairly limits competition, distorts App Store visibility, and funnels massive amounts of user data into OpenAI’s systems—reinforcing its technological dominance in the generative AI market.

xAI is seeking billions of dollars in damages and a permanent injunction that could force Apple to open iOS, Siri, and Apple Intelligence to alternative AI assistants such as Grok, Claude, and Gemini. The case stands to reshape the rules for AI-powered integrations across the global mobile ecosystem and could establish new standards for competition, user choice, and data ownership.

xAI targets Apple and OpenAI with an antitrust lawsuit.

Musk’s 61-page complaint, filed on August 25, 2025, lays out a comprehensive case against Apple and OpenAI, accusing them of forming a restrictive commercial partnership that places ChatGPT at the core of iPhone functionality while systematically excluding rival models. According to xAI, Apple gave OpenAI an unrivaled position inside Apple Intelligence and Siri, allowing it to dominate a critical segment of the mobile AI market.

The suit alleges that competitors such as Grok—developed by xAI—are penalized in two principal ways. First, Siri routes a significant volume of user prompts to ChatGPT by default, making OpenAI the first-choice provider without any explicit user decision. Second, the complaint argues that Apple manipulates recommendation algorithms and actively suppresses rival AI apps from high-visibility sections of the App Store, such as “Editor’s Choice” and “Must-Have AI Apps.”

xAI argues that these practices distort both consumer choice and market fairness. In addition to seeking substantial financial compensation, the lawsuit requests a permanent injunction that would require Apple to open iOS to competing providers, creating a more level playing field for generative AI technologies.

ChatGPT’s integration into Siri drives the legal dispute.

At the heart of the complaint is Apple’s decision to integrate ChatGPT directly into Siri and Apple Intelligence. Since the rollout of Apple’s new AI framework, users can access ChatGPT-driven answers natively, giving OpenAI a reach advantage that its competitors simply cannot match.

xAI claims this design choice creates structural favoritism by routing billions of prompts through OpenAI’s models as a default. OpenAI is able to collect large-scale interaction data from iPhone users, which is leveraged to train next-generation models and deepen its technological edge. Meanwhile, rival assistants—including Grok—are excluded from iOS-level integrations, blocking them from competing on equal terms.

The complaint also cites internal testimony from Phillip Shoemaker, a former App Store chief, who described Apple’s app ranking policies as “arbitrary, opaque, and easily weaponized.” This testimony strengthens xAI’s argument that App Store rankings are manipulated to prioritize OpenAI-powered tools and bury alternatives.

Apple and OpenAI reject Musk’s allegations.

In response to the lawsuit, OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood described the filing as part of Musk’s “ongoing pattern of harassment.” OpenAI maintains that its partnership with Apple is transparent, consumer-driven, and does not violate any competition laws. Apple, meanwhile, has remained silent; as of 18:30 UTC, the company had issued no public comment on the suit. Despite the news, Apple’s stock closed up 0.6% on the day, indicating that investors are so far unfazed by the legal challenge.

Broader implications for AI competition, regulation, and data policy.

Legal analysts believe this case could become a landmark battle for AI competition within mobile ecosystems. If xAI prevails, Apple may be forced to open Siri and Apple Intelligence to multiple AI providers, allowing direct integrations with Grok, Claude, Gemini, and others. Such a precedent could accelerate regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe, especially under the Digital Markets Act, which is already aimed at curbing platform gatekeeping.

If Apple and OpenAI win, the ruling could further entrench OpenAI’s position within the Apple ecosystem, establishing it as the default AI provider for iOS devices and making it more difficult for competing assistants to gain visibility and user adoption.

Significantly, this lawsuit represents one of the first major tests of whether AI assistants should be recognized as a distinct antitrust market. If the courts choose to define AI assistants as a separate competitive domain, the outcome will shape not just Apple and OpenAI’s future, but also the structure of competition across the broader technology industry.

A central case for the future of mobile AI ecosystems...

The Musk–xAI lawsuit signals a fundamental shift in how mobile ecosystems are governed and how critical AI integration has become to platform strategy. For Apple, the partnership with OpenAI is a core pillar of its Apple Intelligence vision, but it opens the company to accusations of unfair platform control. For Musk and xAI, this lawsuit serves as both a business defense for Grok and an ideological challenge to Apple’s power to shape user access to generative AI.

The eventual ruling will set a precedent for the future of AI on mobile platforms, determining whether users retain genuine freedom of choice among AI assistants or whether tightly controlled ecosystems consolidate around exclusive partnerships. As AI becomes the next frontier of competition and innovation, the stakes of this legal contest could hardly be higher.

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