Apple, OpenAI tell judge to dismiss Elon Musk's App Store lawsuit

“Speculation on top of speculation” can be used to describe any number of Elon Musk's daily posts on his social media platform X.

However, in this particular case, that's how Apple's lawyers are responding to X Corp.'s lawsuit against the company, which alleges rigged App Store charts and favoritism towards certain AI apps.

On Tuesday, Apple filed its response to Musk and his company, asking the judge to outright dismiss the case.

Musk's company filed a lawsuit against Apple back in August. X Corp. claimed that Apple was "working in tandem" with ChatGPT creator OpenAI in order to "maintain their monopolies." This followed Musk taking to — where else? — X to openly accuse Apple and OpenAI of rigging the App Store against xAI and Grok. In his suit, Musk alleged that Apple was preventing his companies and products from fairly competing.

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The lawsuit specifically singled out Apple's deal with OpenAI, in which ChatGPT powers some of the company's Apple Intelligence features. However, according to Apple's lawyers, its deal with OpenAI is not "exclusive."

"Apple and OpenAI's agreement is expressly not exclusive, and it is public and widely known that Apple intends to partner with other generative AI chatbots," Apple's lawyers said.

OpenAI's lawyers also responded to Musk's lawsuit against them, claiming Musk is engaging in "a campaign of lawfare" and also asked the judge to dismiss the case.

X Corp. claimed that Apple's partnership with OpenAI meant that Apple had to "simultaneously" partner "with every other generative AI chatbot." Apple's lawyers scoffed at the idea, responding simply that " antitrust laws do not require that.” 

Musk also alleged in the lawsuit that Apple was rigging the App Store rankings in favor of ChatGPT and hurting Musk's apps like X and Grok.

When Musk first posted his theory that Apple was rigging the App Store against Grok, X users were quick to point out that numerous other AI apps have hit the top of the App Store rankings. (Musk's theory was also refuted by Community Notes.) Most recently, Gemini has been dominating App Store charts thanks to the runaway success of Nano Banana, an AI image editor.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.