Jess Weatherbed, reporting for The Verge:

Elon Musk says that his artificial intelligence company xAI “will take immediate legal action” against Apple for allegedly manipulating its App Store rankings to the advantage of rival AI apps. In a series of X posts on Monday night, Musk suggested that Apple was “playing politics” by not placing either X or xAI’s Grok chatbot in the App Store’s list of recommended iOS apps, and that he had no choice but to file a lawsuit.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk said. “Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?,” the xAI CEO asked Apple in another post, which is now pinned to his profile.

Musk provided no evidence for his claims, and it’s unclear if he has made good on his threats and filed the lawsuit yet.

Musk is probably the world’s most litigious bumbling moron who has ever tainted the planet, and I don’t write those words lightly. I’m in no way endorsing Apple’s App Store rankings, but I do know that Apple has never favored a company it has partnered with before through recommendations — only back-alley payment deals, like the one it struck with Amazon a while ago. Spotify, one of Apple’s most prominent nemeses, sits proudly at No. 1 on the U.S. App Store under the Music category and has held that spot for years, and Apple has done nothing to prevent people from downloading it. If it did, that would maybe be considered an antitrust violation.

What isn’t an antitrust violation, however, is a private corporation recommending an app its employees think is worth its users’ time and money. (Looks like someone needs to read the First Amendment of the Constitution.) The App Store is not a public marketplace where anyone can sell anything they want and receive free promotion from one of the world’s largest companies. Apple has rules and regulations on who is allowed to distribute content on the App Store, what that content might include, and how it must be packaged. It does not allow indecent material or scammy apps, for instance, and even the European Union’s overarching Digital Markets Act allows Apple to enforce these rules on its bespoke app marketplace. And no matter what Apple approves, no law on the planet forces it to market apps it doesn’t like.

To be recommended by the App Store’s editorial team is a highly prestigious honor, as it indicates your work is good enough to be seen by hundreds of millions of people every day. Nobody sues the Michelin Guide for snubbing their restaurant of a Michelin Star. Grok still remains on the App Store at the appropriate ranking, and users can still download it freely. It’s just that because Grok didn’t get a Michelin Star-esque App Store recommendation, Musk thinks that’s cause to sue Apple for some antitrust bogus. Frankly, I think Musk should write the App Store team an effusive letter of gratitude for not pulling Grok from the store after his petulant army of sycophants put a downright obscene, X-rated anime role-play game in the app without changing the age rating — a flagrant violation of the App Store rules.

Nobody knows if this lawsuit will ever be filed — my guess is probably not — but Musk’s threats aren’t surprising to me even in the slightest. Grok literally calls itself Adolf Hitler when asked what its name is, and Musk somehow thinks that kind of technology meets the high bar Apple maintains for app recommendations? I don’t see how not liking Hitler is political, but maybe that’s just the new 2025 political calculus. Anyone working for any of Musk’s companies — especially X and xAI — is a downright embarrassment to society and software engineering in general.

(Further reading: an A+ response to Musk’s tantrum by Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; and an enormously ignominious post from Tim Sweeney, Epic Games’ chief executive.)