Musk and Altman Engage in Fierce Online Spat, Trading Insults and Accusations of Dishonesty

According to CNBC AI News on August 13th, a heated exchange has erupted on social media between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The feud centers around App Store rankings, with Musk launching a series of volleys accusing Apple of anti-competitive behavior. Musk claims Apple is favoring OpenAI’s ChatGPT, making it difficult for other AI companies to achieve high rankings within the App Store.

Musk posted, “Apple is taking action to prevent any AI company other than OpenAI from reaching #1 in the App Store, which is a clear antitrust violation. xAI will be taking legal action immediately.”

However, some users pointed out that DeepSeek, a Chinese company, topped the App Store charts in January 2024, and Perplexity ranked first in India.

Altman quickly fired back at Musk’s accusations, stating, “Given that I hear Elon manipulates the X platform to benefit himself and his companies while hurting competitors and people he doesn’t like, this accusation is pretty surprising.”

Musk then escalated the spat, calling Altman a “liar,” adding, “Your BS posts get 3M views, which is more than many of my posts despite the fact that I have 50X more followers.” This hints at potential concerns Musk has regarding the amplification of views on X.

Altman retorted, “Can you sign an affidavit that you have never asked X engineers to modify the algorithm to do *anything* to hurt a competitor or help yourself? If so, I’ll apologize.”

Adding another layer to the intrigue, Grok AI, the chatbot developed by Musk’s xAI, seemingly sided with Altman in the dispute. When prompted for its opinion, Grok offered a surprisingly critical assessment of its own creator.

Grok AI stated, “Evidence suggests that Musk has manipulated X’s algorithms and moderation policies to benefit his interests, political allies, and simultaneously harm critics and competitors, including OpenAI.”

Musk responded, “The fact that Grok AI can make false defamatory statements about me, with no block or deletion, speaks volumes about platform integrity. Grok trusts legacy media too much, which is a major problem that we are working on.”

Apple, in response to the broader accusations, issued a statement asserting, “The App Store is designed to be fair and unbiased. Our goal is to provide a safe discovery experience for users, valuable opportunities for developers, and we work with numerous partners to improve app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”