OpenAI Mocks Musk’s Math in iPhone AI Lawsuit
▼ Summary
– OpenAI and Apple are seeking to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit from Elon Musk’s xAI over ChatGPT’s integration into iPhone features.
– The lawsuit claims the integration gives OpenAI a monopoly on prompts and blocks rivals, following Musk’s complaints about Grok’s exclusion from Apple’s app lists.
– xAI alleges that linking ChatGPT to Siri provides OpenAI exclusive access to billions of prompts for training data to maintain market dominance.
– OpenAI and Apple dispute xAI’s estimates, calling them baseless and noting that the 55% prompt share claim is vague and unsupported.
– OpenAI argues the integration is limited to newer iPhone models, requires user opt-in, and account linking, which restricts the potential prompt pool.
In the ongoing legal dispute between OpenAI, Apple, and Elon Musk’s xAI, the central issue revolves around claims that integrating ChatGPT into iPhone features creates an unfair market advantage. OpenAI and Apple have jointly filed to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit, arguing that the allegations lack factual foundation and rely on speculative calculations. The case emerged after Musk publicly criticized Apple for excluding his Grok AI from prominent app lists while regularly featuring ChatGPT.
Musk’s lawsuit contends that by embedding ChatGPT into Siri and other native iPhone functions, OpenAI gains privileged access to an enormous volume of user prompts. He asserts this provides OpenAI with exclusive training data, reinforcing its dominance in the AI chatbot sector. However, legal documents submitted by OpenAI and Apple dismiss these claims as mathematically unsound and conceptually flawed.
According to court filings, xAI’s market share estimates were labeled “baseless” by OpenAI’s legal team. The complaint suggested OpenAI could capture “up to 55 percent” of chatbot prompts due to the Apple partnership, a figure OpenAI pointed out could mean anything from zero to more than half the market. OpenAI highlighted that Musk appeared unwilling to specify any actual percentage of market foreclosure caused by the deal.
The disputed estimate originated from what OpenAI described as “back-of-the-envelope math.” xAI allegedly divided Siri’s reported 1.5 billion daily global user requests by an assumed 2.7 billion total daily generative AI prompts. OpenAI countered that this approach overlooks key limitations: ChatGPT integration is only available on recent iPhone models and requires explicit user consent. Moreover, users must link an existing ChatGPT account before OpenAI can utilize any data for training, drastically reducing the potential prompt pool cited in xAI’s calculations.
(Source: Ars Technica)
