A federal judge denied Apple and OpenAI's motions to dismiss Elon Musk's antitrust lawsuit Thursday, allowing X Corp. and xAI's claims of market monopolization to proceed toward trial.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman rejected both companies' attempts to dismiss the case, ruling that the allegations warrant further examination through summary judgment.
“This Order should not be construed as a judgment (or pre-judgment) on the merits of this litigation,” the ruling says.
The lawsuit, filed in August, targets Apple's June 2024 decision to make ChatGPT the exclusive AI assistant integrated into iOS.
"This is a procedural step. The real impact now is where the facts will actually be tested," Even Alex Chandra, a partner at IGNOS Law Alliance, told Decrypt.
The case highlights "an unresolved question globally" about how "default AI integrations on dominant platforms" should be treated under antitrust law, with regulators still defining what the "AI market" even is, Chandra added.
X Corp. and xAI's complaint seeks billions in damages, alleging the exclusive arrangement gives ChatGPT access to "hundreds of millions of iPhones" while blocking competitors like xAI's Grok chatbot.
The lawsuit claims ChatGPT controls "at least 80 percent" of the generative AI chatbot market while Grok holds only "a few percent" despite superior capabilities.
Musk’s firms also accuse Apple of manipulating App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT while suppressing competitors. Despite Grok ranking second in Apple's "Productivity" category and X ranking first in "News," neither appears in the prominent "Must-Have Apps" section, where ChatGPT is featured.
Ishita Sharma, managing partner at Fathom Legal, told Decrypt the case hinges on "evidence of exclusion vs. efficiency,” whether rivals are "truly blocked" from Apple's iOS or if it's simply a "competitive partnership in a nascent but fast-moving market."
The defense will likely argue that "competition remains alive" across platforms and browsers, that the arrangement may not be "strictly exclusive" contractually, and that the integration delivers competitive efficiencies, Sharma added.
Decrypt has reached out to Apple, OpenAI, and X for comment.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, but stepped down from its board in 2018, according to an announcement that said his departure would “eliminate a potential future conflict” as Tesla expanded its own AI work.
Since then, Musk has accused OpenAI of ditching openness for “a closed, profit-driven arm of Microsoft” and has sued repeatedly, most notably a lawsuit over abandoning its founding mission and a suit filed two months back alleging trade secret theft.
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