The fight between the tech heavyweights is heating up: Elon Musk denounced OpenAI and Apple for 'inhibiting competition and innovation in AI'.

Two of magnate Elon Musk 's companies, X (formerly Twitter) and xAI, its branch specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI), have sued Apple and OpenAI because they consider that they "inhibit competition and innovation in AI."

The complaint, filed in a court in the Northern District of Texas, alleges that Apple and OpenAI "have colluded" to maintain a virtual monopoly on artificial intelligence in smartphones and other technological devices.

Musk's move is the latest chapter in an increasingly bitter clash with the other two tech moguls.

Musk argues that OpenAI has strayed from its founding principles, and objects to Apple promoting the highly popular ChatGPT on its App Store while removing Grok, xAI's own chatbot, from that store.

Apple is keeping quiet for now, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has already responded to Musk on his own X network, accusing him of the same thing: " This is a striking indictment of what I've heard Elon do, manipulating X to benefit himself and his companies and hurt his competitors and everyone he doesn't like."

Musk had already sued OpenAI last year, accusing it of breach of contract for putting commercial interests before a supposed original mission of using AI altruistically, but it was OpenAI's partnership with Apple to integrate its chatbots into all Apple products (phones, tablets, and computers) that escalated this rivalry.

In parallel, Musk has tried his hand at courting Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, to jointly make a $97.4 billion offer to acquire OpenAI earlier this year, according to court documents published last Wednesday, but that offer fell through.

A possible merger between the two tech giants is surprising, to say the least, given that the two moguls have publicly clashed on social media, especially since Musk acquired Twitter, a social network that directly competes with Facebook and Instagram, platforms that are part of Meta.

Increasingly, Musk has turned all the other tech dinosaurs into his enemies for one reason or another. EFE