Key Highlights –
- After OpenAI, now Apple has filed a motion to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s xAI.
- Musk’s xAI earlier alleged that Apple and OpenAI are illegally conspiring to stifle competition by featuring ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence and by Apple deprioritizing rival apps (like Grok) in the App Store rankings.
- Apple maintains its agreement with OpenAI is expressly not exclusive and denies that it harms competition, stating that xAI’s claims are based on “speculation.”
Apple, alongside OpenAI, moved on Tuesday to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, arguing that their partnership to integrate ChatGPT into Apple’s operating systems is non-exclusive and does not illegally harm competition.
The joint motion to dismiss, filed in a U.S. federal court in Texas, directly challenges xAI’s claim that the deal to feature ChatGPT in the Apple Intelligence suite amounts to an illegal conspiracy between two “monopolists.”
xAI Alleges Favoritism in Apple’s App Store
The lawsuit, filed by X Corp. and xAI in August 2025, alleges that Apple is using its dominant position in the smartphone market to unfairly favor OpenAI. Specifically, xAI claimed that the partnership effectively blocks rival generative AI apps, such as xAI’s Grok chatbot, from achieving prominent placement in the App Store rankings. xAI argued that Apple would have “no reason” to deprioritize X or Grok if not for an alleged exclusive arrangement with OpenAI, and is seeking billions of dollars in alleged damages.
For context, xAI’s lawsuit is the latest chapter in a wider legal feud initiated by Musk against OpenAI, a company he co-founded, over its shift to a for-profit model and alleged trade secret theft.
Apple Clears Speculations
In its legal filing, Apple’s legal team pushed back on the central claim of exclusivity. Lawyers stated that the agreement with OpenAI is “expressly not exclusive” and that it is “widely known that Apple intends to partner with other generative AI chatbots.” This statement aligns with earlier industry speculation that Apple is seeking deals with other major model providers, notably Google’s Gemini, to offer users a choice of third-party AI integration.
Furthermore, Apple and OpenAI argue that the antitrust injuries cited by xAI are based on “speculation on top of speculation.” OpenAI’s motion to dismiss characterized Musk’s legal action as part of his “ongoing pattern of harassment” and stated that xAI has not “plausibly allege[d]” that the integration of ChatGPT harms competition in a legally actionable way. The filing suggests that antitrust laws do not compel Apple to partner with “every other generative AI chatbot – regardless of quality, privacy or safety considerations, technical feasibility, stage of development, or commercial terms.”
The judge in Fort Worth, Texas, will now consider the motions to dismiss, setting the stage for a critical ruling that will determine whether the case proceeds to discovery.
You may also like to read – Apple Finally Rolls Out iOS 26 with “New” Apple Intelligence Features
Apple Quietly Drops Its Own AI Models
The Cupertino tech giant, had launched two of its models on Hugging Face – FastVLM and MobileCLIP2, claiming that both the models run locally and offer almost real-time output. These models are a part of the company’s core machine learning framework, MLX, and their on-device processing would ensure privacy first approach in real-time output without requiring to sending any data to the cloud whatsoever.
Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue praised the release on X, stating that those who believe Apple is lagging in AI are “getting blindsided by the chatbot hype” and not paying attention to the company’s focus on on-device, real-time vision capabilities.
For a in-browser demo and source code, check out the FastVLM WebGPU here.
