The long-term feud between Elon Musk And Sam Altman came to the surface this week as billionaire AI heavyweights publicly battled over their rival companies.
The latest round of the battle between X's CEO and OpenAI's CEO began when Musk said Apple was favoring Altman's AI app over his own in Apple Store rankings.
“Apple is behaving in such a way that no artificial intelligence company other than OpenAI can reach number one in the App Store, which is a clear violation of antitrust laws,” Musk said in X on Monday evening. “xAI will sue immediately,” he added, referring to the artificial intelligence company he heads.
Earlier in the day, Musk criticized Apple for not including his X app and generative AI chatbot system Grok in its featured list:
“Hey @Apple App Store, why are you refusing to put X or Grok in the “Must Have” section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is the #5 of all apps?” he asked. “Are you playing politics?”
In an earlier statement, Apple said that “the App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias.”
Read more: 'We are the last of the forgotten: inside the Memphis community the fight against xAI by Elon Musk
Altman, who co-founded OpenAI with Musk in 2015 before Musk left the company, replied about X: “This is a remarkable statement considering what I've heard about Elon manipulating X to benefit himself and his companies, as well as hurt his competitors and people he doesn't like.”
Altman included a link to an article in Platformer News that claimed Musk manipulated Algorithm X to make his tweets appear more visible to users and suit his interests.
The two discussed this in replies with Musk accusing Altman of lying– “You have 3 million views on your shitty post, you liar, way more than I got on many of mine, even though I have 50 times more followers!”
To which Altman replied: “skills problem.” Altman then said he would apologize if Musk signed “a witness statement that [he has] never made changes to Algorithm X in a way that would harm its “competitors.”
Before their falling out, Musk and Altman were once business partners. Musk has sued Altman and OpenAI twice since he left the company in 2018 for allegedly violating OpenAI's founding mission of building AI in a way that makes a difference. “all of humanity.”
Since then, the two have been increasingly at odds. After leaving OpenAI, Musk created his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, which made Grok a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT language model.
Both Altman's OpenAI and Musk's xAI have been the subject of controversy from whistleblowers in recent years. accusing OpenAI prioritized product development over security last year and used voice Scarlett Johansson without her consent. Grok, X's chatbot, has previously spread false claims about “white genocide” in South Africa, and has also sparked significant backlash over health issues in surrounding communities. xAI Data Centers Mask.
