Apple on Thursday rejected Elon Musk’s claim that its App Store gives preferential treatment to OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his company’s Grok and other AI competitors.

Musk’s accusations of favouritism, coupled with his threat of legal action, led to a tense exchange with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this week.

“The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias,” Apple said in reply to an AFP inquiry.

“We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria.”

Apple stated that the App Store aims to provide users with a “safe discovery” experience while giving developers opportunities to showcase their creations.

Earlier in the week, Musk had said Apple was “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,” without providing evidence to back his claim.

“xAI will take immediate legal action,” he said on his social media network X, referring to his own artificial intelligence company, which is responsible for Grok.

X users noted that China’s DeepSeek AI reached the top spot in the App Store earlier this year, while Perplexity AI recently claimed number one in India.

Both DeepSeek and Perplexity compete with OpenAI and Musk’s xAI.

Responding on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described Musk’s accusation as “remarkable,” alleging that Musk reportedly “manipulates X to benefit himself and his companies while disadvantaging competitors and people he dislikes.”