Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken the legal gloves off against Apple and OpenAI in a high-stakes lawsuit that he filed Monday. Claiming the two companies have colluded to cement monopolies in the nascent AI chatbot market, the lawsuit threatens Musk’s long-delayed plans to turn Twitter into an “everything app.”

The suit was filed on behalf of Musk’s Twitter parent X and his AI startup xAI. It comes after Musk previously blasted Apple for promoting rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT app in its “Must Have” category, while Grok, Musk’s own chatbot, has been conspicuously absent. In the latest move, Musk is taking the complaint well beyond App Store rankings. In it, X alleges that Apple and OpenAI have cut a deal that grants ChatGPT exclusive access to phone features and excludes competitors from tapping into Apple’s massive customer base. The suit argues that the arrangement breaches antitrust and unfair competition laws, making it all but impossible for Musk to realize his vision for X.

The complaint filed in the Northern District of California says that Apple has integrated ChatGPT into iOS as the default for Siri, its built-in Writing Tools, and other functions. It gives OpenAI exclusive access to billions of user prompts and interactions, X said, which it argues are needed to train and improve such models. According to the filing, without that data to compete on, Grok cannot scale to OpenAI’s size.

Apple’s partnership with OpenAI was confirmed in February and has been covered as such, as it gives ChatGPT users exclusive access to several powerful iPhone features and data that Musk previously claimed could help supercharge Grok’s capabilities. The integration has been rolled out in stages over several months, most recently including the ability for iPhone owners to use ChatGPT while their device is locked, and with iOS keyboard and calling services for international calls.

OpenAI’s market share is already estimated to be at least 80 percent by X. The complaint argues that Apple’s integration cements that, and with it, a long-term monopoly. “Generative AI chatbots would vigorously compete with one another in a fair market,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, defendants’ anticompetitive conduct has handed a substantial portion of the market to ChatGPT.”

X also says that Apple is acting out of fear that a successful competitor to the iPhone could eventually emerge. If a super app can consolidate numerous functions into a single smartphone platform, the company is concerned, then a competitor might one day challenge the iPhone itself. In China, the complaint points to WeChat’s all-in-one ecosystem as having supplanted many iPhone functions that Apple’s devices already ship with out of the box.

Citing an internal Apple email from Eddy Cue, the filing says that one Apple executive has already warned that AI could “destroy Apple’s smartphone business.” For Musk, the goal of Apple’s deal with OpenAI is to protect its iPhone monopoly before it is under threat, while cementing an insurmountable generative AI lead for OpenAI.

OpenAI Captures Prime Position in Emerging Chatbot Market

Apple is accused of rejecting requests from xAI and Grok to partner on its iOS integration in the same way that OpenAI was, with Apple instead taking steps to bury Grok on the App Store. This includes that the company removed the Grok app from its own search results after X inquired about building a new partnership with Apple, according to the filing, and blocked featuring Grok on iOS “Imagine” launch day.

Apple rejected an interview request from The Verge. In a statement to Ars Technica, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “This lawsuit is just the latest example of Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment against OpenAI and its founders. As always, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves in court.” In public, Musk has previously claimed that Apple has an “extreme dislike for me personally,” while Apple CEO Tim Cook once said of Musk that his leadership is “neither stable nor sustainable.”

Exclusive access to Apple is one of several areas where X argues that the market power of OpenAI will keep rivals from catching up. An important advantage is data: In 2024 alone, Siri reportedly handled 1.5 billion user requests each day worldwide, more than the aggregate of all generative AI chatbots for the year. By feeding those prompts exclusively to OpenAI, Apple will control up to 55 percent of the volume of all possible chatbot interactions, X argues.

The implication, according to the lawsuit, is that Apple will give its partners — in this case, OpenAI — a “massive artificial advantage” that is effectively impossible for competitors to overcome, reducing consumer choice and forcing people to use their iPhones to chat with ChatGPT. The filing also contends that OpenAI’s market position will let it charge monopoly subscription prices for ChatGPT, which it plans to double over the next four years. “That plan would be unfeasible unless OpenAI has power over marketwide prices,” the lawsuit claims.

In framing the deal as a landmark for both companies, X suggests that it does not make much financial sense on its own. Apple reportedly received ChatGPT for free from OpenAI, with the startup covering its own development and engineering costs and paying for its servers to generate AI responses. It does not expect to see a profit for at least a decade, X says. In the meantime, the deal is worth more as a means of excluding rivals, as it broadly blocks their ability to reach Apple’s users. “By making the deal exclusive, Apple sacrificed the profits it would have earned by integrating multiple chatbots,” the complaint states. “The true motive was Apple and OpenAI’s shared goal of blocking competition.”