Musk Drops Apple Claims but Keeps Antitrust Case Against OpenAI

Elon Musk’s antitrust fight is narrowing, but it is not going away. In a recent court filing, Musk’s side agreed to resolve all claims against Apple and promised not to bring the same claims again. The filing does not disclose whether Apple provided any negotiated concessions, nor does it explain why the case against Apple was voluntarily dismissed.

The dispute is shifting

The original case focused on Apple’s decision to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone features. Musk criticized the partnership when it was announced, arguing that it could give OpenAI privileged access to users’ AI prompts. He later alleged that the arrangement helped create a monopoly in both smartphones and chatbots.

Musk also accused Apple of making it impossible for rival AI companies to reach the top of the App Store, citing the position of his own chatbot, Grok. With Apple now out of the litigation, however, the central question is likely to become whether OpenAI used Apple’s distribution reach to limit competition in the chatbot market.

Questions the court still has to address

• Can a partnership have anticompetitive effects even if Apple says the agreement was nonexclusive?
• Does Musk have standing to challenge conduct in a smartphone market in which none of his companies makes phones?
• Are Musk’s estimates of the market allegedly foreclosed by the deal sufficiently grounded in evidence?
• What do Apple’s internal discussions reveal about product design, promotion, and competing AI services?

OpenAI has called Musk’s case baseless and argued that he has not identified a credible measure of the market supposedly closed off by the deal. Musk has reportedly offered a range running from zero to 55 percent, based on rough calculations. OpenAI says that such an estimate is too speculative to support an antitrust claim.

A potential defense for OpenAI

OpenAI may also point to its own dissatisfaction with the Apple arrangement. The company has publicly suggested that it felt “burned” because Apple did not promote the integration as strongly as expected. Reports said OpenAI had anticipated substantial subscription revenue, but that Apple’s implementation made the ChatGPT functions difficult for users to discover. Attempts to renegotiate the arrangement reportedly stalled.

That account could weaken the theory that OpenAI used Apple to establish a chatbot monopoly. If Apple did not actively promote ChatGPT, and if the relevant features were hard to find, proving that the partnership foreclosed rivals becomes more difficult.

What happens next

A court has already ordered Apple to provide Musk’s companies with internal messages discussing the OpenAI deal. Those records may have helped Musk decide that the claims against Apple were less valuable than the evidence they could provide for the remaining case against OpenAI.

The litigation also faces procedural obstacles. Apple and OpenAI have argued that Musk does not compete in the smartphone industry and therefore lacks standing. Musk previously lost a separate lawsuit over OpenAI’s mission, after a jury unanimously found that he had waited too long to sue, rather than ruling that every underlying allegation was invalid.

The case could ultimately test how antitrust law applies to AI distribution partnerships. A nonexclusive agreement may still raise competition concerns if a platform’s design, promotion, or ranking practices give one model a meaningful advantage. But proving that effect will require more than a broad estimate: Musk will need evidence linking the Apple deal to actual market foreclosure.

Source: Ars Technica AI