On Monday, X CTO Elon Musk accused Apple of unfairly ranking ChatGPT in its editorial sections.
Apple reportedly said its curated lists are selected by experts based on objective criteria
Photo Credit: Unsplash/James Yarema
Apple has reportedly responded to the allegations made by Elon Musk on Monday, where the billionaire accused the iPhone maker of being biased towards OpenAI's ChatGPT app. The Cupertino-based tech giant has refuted all allegations and highlighted that apps are ranked on the App Store based on algorithms and selection by experts operating with objective criteria. Notably, the Chief Technology Officer of X (formerly known as Twitter) made a series of posts on the social media platform questioning Apple's App Store handling practices.
An Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg that the App Store is designed to be free of bias. “We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria. Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories,” the publication cited the spokesperson as saying.
On Monday, Musk started a war of words on X after learning that ChatGPT ranked high in various charts of the App Store and featured in almost all of the editorial sections. The billionaire entrepreneur went so far as to call it “an unequivocal antitrust violation” and threatened to take legal action against the iPhone maker.
In a separate post, he also claimed that Grok, a chatbot created by Musk-founded xAI, was intentionally not being listed in any of the app charts, and accused that due to the AI deal with OpenAI, Apple was “making it impossible for any other AI company to succeed.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also got involved in the exchange of words and said, “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.” To this, Musk called Altman a liar and claimed that his post received three million views, which were higher than some of his posts, despite me having 50 times your follower count!”
Notably, Perplexity currently ranks at the top of the App Store's Free Apps chart in India. OpenAI's ChatGPT is ranked in the second position, while xAI's Grok lies in the 12th spot.
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