Elon Musk on Monday targeted Apple and OpenAI in an antitrust lawsuit alleging that the iPhone maker and the ChatGPT maker are teaming up to thwart competition in artificial intelligence.
The 61-page complaint filed in Texas federal court follows through on a threat that Musk made two weeks ago when he accused Apple of unfairly favoring OpenAI and ChatGPT in the iPhone's app store rankings for top AI apps.
Musk's post insinuated that Apple had rigged the system against ChatGPT competitors such as the Grok chatbot made by his own xAI. Now, he is detailing a litany of grievances in the lawsuit — filed by xAI and another of his corporate entities, X Corp. — in an attempt to win monetary damages and a court order prohibiting the alleged illegal tactics.
The double-barreled legal attack weaves together several recently unfolding narratives to recast a year-old partnership between Apple and OpenAI as a veiled conspiracy to stifle competition during a technological shift that could prove as revolutionary as the 2007 release of the iPhone.
“This is a tale of two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance in a world rapidly driven by the most powerful technology humanity has ever created: artificial intelligence,” the lawsuit asserts.
The complaint portrays Apple as a company that views AI as an “existential threat” to its future success, prompting it to collude with OpenAI in an attempt to protect the iPhone franchise that has long been its biggest moneymaker.
Some of the allegations accusing Apple of trying to shield the iPhone from do-everything “super apps,” such as the one Musk has long been trying to create with X, echo an antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple last year by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The complaint casts OpenAI as a threat to humanity bent on putting profits before public safety as it tries to build on its phenomenal growth since the late 2022 release of ChatGPT. The depiction mirrors one already being drawn in another federal lawsuit that Musk filed last year, alleging OpenAI had betrayed its founding mission to serve as a nonprofit research lab for the public good.
OpenAI has countered with a lawsuit against Musk accusing him of harassment — an allegation that the company cited in its response to Monday's antitrust lawsuit. “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment,” OpenAI said in a statement.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The crux of the lawsuit revolves around Apple's decision to use ChatGPT as an AI-powered “answer engine” on the iPhone when the built-in technology on its device couldn't satisfy user needs. The partnership announced last year was part of Apple's late entry into the AI race that was supposed to be powered mostly by its own on-device technology, but the company still hasn't been able to deliver on all its promises.
Apple's own AI shortcomings may be helping drive more usage of ChatGPT on the iPhone, providing OpenAI with invaluable data that's unavailable to Grok and other would-be competitors because it's currently an exclusive partnership.
The alliance has provided Apple with an incentive to improperly elevate ChatGPT in the AI rankings of the iPhone's app store, the lawsuit alleges. Other AI apps from DeekSeek and Perplexity have periodically reached the top spot in the Apple app store's AI rankings in at least some parts of the world since Apple announced its deal with ChatGPT.
The lawsuit doesn't mention the potential threat that ChatGPT could also pose to Apple and the iPhone's future popularity. As part of its expansion efforts, OpenAI recruited former Apple designer Jony Ive to oversee a project aimed at building an AI-powered device that many analysts believe could eventually mount a challenge to the iPhone.
FILE - The OpenAI logo appears on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with random binary data, March 9, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
FILE - An Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store on March 14, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
FILE - Elon Musk attends a news conference with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, May 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, file)
NAIVASHA, Kenya (AP) — When Dickson Ngome first leased his farm at Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Rift Valley in 2008, it was over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from shore. The farm was on 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of fertile land where he grew vegetables to sell at local markets.
At the time, the lake was receding and people were worried that it might dry up altogether. But since 2011, the shore has crept ever closer. The rains started early this year, in September, and didn't let up for months.
One morning in late October, Ngome and his family woke up to find their home and farm inside the lake. The lake levels had risen overnight and about a foot of water covered everything.
“It seemed as if the lake was far from our homes,” Ngome’s wife, Rose Wafula, told The Associated Press. “And then one night we were shocked to find our houses flooded. The water came from nowhere.”
The couple and their four children have had to leave home and are camping out on the first floor of an abandoned school nearby.
Some 5,000 people were displaced by the rise in Lake Naivasha’s levels this year. Some scientists attribute the higher levels to increased rains caused by climate change, although there may be other factors causing the lake’s steady rise over the past decade.
The lake is a tourism hot spot and surrounded by farms, mostly growing flowers, which have gradually been disappearing into the water as the lake levels rise.
Rising levels have not been isolated to Naivasha: Kenya’s Lake Baringo, Lake Nakuru and Lake Turkana — all in the Rift Valley — have been steadily rising for 15 years.
“The lakes have risen almost beyond the highest level they have ever reached,” said Simon Onywere, who teaches environmental planning at Kenyatta University in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
A study in the Journal of Hydrology last year found that lake areas in East Africa increased by 71,822 square kilometers (27,730 square miles) between 2011 and 2023. That affects a lot of people: By 2021, more than 75,000 households had been displaced across the Rift Valley, according to a study commissioned that year by the Kenyan Environment Ministry and the United Nations Development Program.
In Baringo, the submerged buildings that made headlines in 2020 and 2021 are still underwater.
“In Lake Baringo, the water rose almost 14 meters,” Onywere said. “Everything went under, completely under. Buildings will never be seen again, like the Block Hotels of Lake Baringo.”
Lake Naivasha has risen steadily too, “engulfing three quarters of some flower farms,” Onywere said.
Horticulture is a major economic sector in Kenya, generating just over a billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2024 and providing 40% of the volume of roses sold in the European Union, according to Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Significant research has gone into the reasons behind the rising lakes phenomenon: A 2021 study on the rise of Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes was coauthored by Kenyan meteorologist Richard Muita, who is now acting assistant director of the Kenya Meteorological Department.
“There are researchers who come up with drivers that are geological, others with reasons like planetary factors,” Muita said. “The Kenya Meteorological Department found that the water level rises are associated with rainfall patterns and temperature changes. When the rains are plentiful, it aligns with the increase in the levels of the Rift Valley lake waters.”
Sedimentation is also a factor. “From the research I have read, there’s a lot of sediment, especially from agricultural related activities, that flows into these lakes,” says Muita.
Naivasha’s official high water mark was demarcated at 1,892.8 meters (6,210 feet) above sea level by the Riparian Association in 1906, and is still used by surveyors today. That means this year’s flooding was still almost a meter (3 feet) below the high mark.
It also means that the community of Kihoto on Lake Naivasha where the Ngomes lived lies on riparian land — land that falls below the high water mark, and can only be owned by the government.
“It’s a mess established by the government … towards the late 1960s,” said Silas Wanjala, general manager of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association, which was founded some 120 years ago and has been keeping meticulous records of the lake’s water levels since.
Back then, a farmer was given a “temporary agricultural lease” on Kihoto, said Wanjala. When it later flooded and the farmer packed up and left, the farmworkers stayed on the land and later applied for subdivisions, which were approved. In the 60-odd years since, a whole settlement has grown on land that is officially not for lease or sale.
This also isn’t the first time it’s been flooded, said Wanjala. It's just very rare that the water comes up this high. That’s little consolation for the people who have been displaced by this year’s floods and now cannot go home without risking confrontations with hippopotamuses.
To support those people, the county is focusing its efforts on where the need is greatest.
“We are tackling this as an emergency," says Joyce Ncece, chief officer for disaster management in Nakuru County, which oversees Lake Naivasha. “The county government has provided trucks to help families relocate. We have been helping to pay rent for those who lack the finances.”
Scientists like Onywere and Muita are hoping for longer-term solutions. “Could we have predicted this so that we could have done better infrastructure in less risk-prone areas?” Onywere said.
Muita wants to see a more concerted global effort to combat climate change, as well as local, nature-based solutions centered on Indigenous knowledge, such as “conservation agriculture, where there is very limited disturbance of the land,” to reduce sedimentation of the lakes.
But all of this is of little help to Ngome and Wafula, who are still living at the school with their children. As the rest of the world looks forward to the holidays and new year, their future is uncertain. Lake Naivasha’s continuous rise over the past 15 years does not bode well: They have no idea when, or if, their farm will ever be back on dry land.
For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
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Residential buildings are submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and flooded homes, in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
People use a boat to cross floodwaters as residential buildings remain submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing people in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A man salvages his belongings after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
Residential buildings are submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and flooded homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A man paddles a boat next to flooded buildings after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
