Possibly tired of battling with President Donald Trump, mega-billionaire Elon Musk is turning to smaller targets.
Instead of taking on the most powerful man in the world, he’s tackling one of the world’s largest companies and one of its best-known artificial intelligence pioneers.
He’s accusing Apple Inc. and OpenAI of being “monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance in a world rapidly driven by the most powerful technology humanity has ever created.”
In the lawsuit filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Musk’s attorneys charge that Apple was “blindsided” by the surge of artificial intelligence and now recognizes the technology as “an existential threat to its business.”
The lawsuit was filed by Musk companies xAI and X Corp. — the company once known as Twitter before Musk’s purchase of it in 2022.
Artificial intelligence, the lawsuit states, is making possible the rise of “multi-functional platforms that offer many of the services of smartphones, such as social connectivity and messaging, financial services, e-commerce, and entertainment — that do not require a customer to be tied to a particular device.”
“In other words, super apps, like those being developed by X and xAI, stand ready to upend the smartphone market and Apple’s entrenched monopoly in it.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI and its “flagship” ChatGPT service, the lawsuit states, has achieved dominance in the AI field and is willing to work with Apple to ensure that competitors — such as xAI’s Grok — are thwarted before they become dangerous.
“Just like Apple, OpenAI has incentive to protect its monopoly by thwarting competition and innovation in the generative AI chatbot market. And just like Apple, it has done so in violation of the antitrust laws,” the lawsuit declares.
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According to The Associated Press, OpenAI dismissed Musk’s lawsuit in a statement Monday.
“This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment,” OpenAI said in a statement.
Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI in 2015. At the time, Wired magazine called the project Musk’s “Wild Plan to Set Artificial Intelligence Free.”
He left the group in 2018, CNBC reported at the time, citing a potential conflict of interest between OpenAI and his artificial intelligence work on his Tesla electric vehicle company.
He has since accused OpenAI of abandoning its core mission, and makes that accusation plain in Monday’s lawsuit:
“OpenAI’s rapid growth — fueled by the controversial business decisions for which it has been criticized and investigated — has so entrenched its dominance that it is now widely recognized that ‘[t]his company, more than any other, has set the tone for the generative-AI era,’” the suit states.
The lawsuit includes a litany of actions Apple and OpenAI have undertaken to squelch competition — specifically against X and xAI — and asks the court for a “permanent injunction enjoining Defendants from repetition of acts similar to the wrongful acts described above.”
It also seeks unspecified monetary damages, but considering the companies involved, they’re likely to be what most Americans would consider stratospheric.
“Working in tandem, Defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing,” the lawsuit states in its opening.
“Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from perpetrating their anticompetitive scheme and to recover billions in damages.”
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