Sam Altman hits back at Elon Musk over App Store showdown

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has publicly countered Elon Musk's allegations regarding Apple's App Store favoritism towards ChatGPT. Musk claimed that Apple is obstructing rival applications from achieving high rankings on the platform, a statement that Altman found ironic given Musk's own practices on his social media platform, X. In a pointed post on X, Altman remarked, "This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like." He expressed a desire for transparency, stating, "I hope someone will get counter-discovery on this, I and many others would love to know what's been happening. But OpenAI will just stay focused on making great products." Altman also referenced an article that highlighted how Musk has allegedly adjusted the X algorithm to prioritize his tweets. Earlier in the day, Musk had threatened legal action against Apple, asserting that the company’s ranking system effectively prevents any AI firm other than OpenAI from reaching the top spot on the App Store, which he labeled as a clear violation of antitrust laws. This dispute marks a significant clash between two of the most prominent figures in the AI landscape, both of whom are leading competing platforms. Recently, OpenAI unveiled its latest model, GPT-5, while Musk's xAI introduced the Grok 4 model just the previous month. Musk has claimed that his AI offering remains superior despite the recent launch of GPT-5. He also announced that the Imagine feature for video and image generation would be free for all users, alongside the Grok 4 models being made accessible without charge. Meanwhile, Altman has been actively refining GPT-5 following its lukewarm reception, with users expressing dissatisfaction over the removal of older OpenAI models from ChatGPT. This has led to some subscribers threatening to cancel their memberships if the previous models are not reinstated.