Tech Desk 
Aug 14, 2025
Merely a day or two following Elon Musk accusing Apple of playing favouritism in App Store rankings, the iPhone maker has reaffirmed Musk's claims.
Musk, the tech billionaire, claimed earlier this week that Apple deliberately ranked poor his artificial intelligence (AI) chabot Grok and social media platform X (formerly Twitter) out of bias.
“We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria,” BBC reported Apple as saying.
Apple's response has come on the heels of Musk's threatening to sue it via xAI, where he claimed that the iPhone manufacturer was “behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
It's worth mentioning that Apple and OpenAI formed a partnership last year to integrate the AI company's models and ChatGPT into Apple's flagship product lineups, including Siri and iOS. However, there is no evidence suggesting that the App Store favours OpenAI over other AI companies.
Contrary to this assumption, AI apps such as Perplexity and DeepSeek topped the App Store charts past year.
In previous years, Apple might have overlooked such claims of chart manipulation. However, the company now faces regulatory scrutiny and new laws worldwide aimed at curbing its dominance in the app distribution market.
Apple was recently faced with reprimands by a US district judge in its ongoing Epic Games lawsuit for failing to implement policy changes on court directives.
