HomeMusk Sues Apple Over Grok Ranking; Judge Orders Tesla, SpaceX Emails
Elon Musk previously filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging that his AI assistant Grok was unfairly ranked low on the Apple App Store. But he probably didn't foresee that this legal action would now turn against his own business empire. Recently, U.S. federal district judge Mark Pitman formally rejected objections from xAI and the X platform, affirming an earlier court ruling that Musk must provide emails from his Tesla and SpaceX accounts as evidence in the case.
The lawsuit stems from Musk's dissatisfaction with Apple. He argued that Grok's low ranking resulted from anti-competitive "backdoor collusion" between Apple and OpenAI. The two companies had formed a deep partnership, with ChatGPT powering Apple's Apple Intelligence and certain new versions of Siri. In an earlier hearing before Judge Hal R. Cogburn, the court issued several key rulings, including appointing Apple executive Craig Federighi as an evidence custodian and ordering Apple to submit recent collaboration documents with Google concerning the Gemini large model.
What really provoked a strong response from Musk's team, however, was the court's adoption of OpenAI's argument, which required the retrieval of emails related to Musk's correspondence within his Tesla and SpaceX official email accounts. Although legal representatives for X and xAI contended that these two companies were independent entities not under their control, the judge promptly dismissed that argument.
In his final ruling, Judge Pitman noted that the case file contained clear indications that Musk frequently handled business affairs across multiple companies. For instance, xAI's CFO had directly sent the company's financial reports to Musk's SpaceX business email address. Based on this, the court concluded that given Musk's controlling stakes and top decision-making roles in several companies, it was common for him to use other companies' email accounts to manage X platform and xAI matters. The judge stressed that once executives use email accounts across different companies for business purposes, the content of those emails automatically falls within the scope of discoverable evidence, and email account ownership cannot serve as a shield.
As of now, the court has not set a final deadline for submitting the emails. Lawyers for X and xAI previously stated that while sorting and organizing these complex cross-company emails would take considerable time, they would cooperate with the court as quickly as possible. This tech giant feud, ignited by AI rankings, is growing increasingly complicated as the core evidence chain expands.
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Elon Musk previously filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging that his AI assistant Grok was unfairly ranked low on the Apple App Store. But he probably didn't foresee that this legal action would now turn against his own business empire. Recently, U.S. federal district judge Mark Pitman formally rejected objections from xAI and the X platform, affirming an earlier court ruling that Musk must provide emails from his Tesla and SpaceX accounts as evidence in the case.
The lawsuit stems from Musk's dissatisfaction with Apple. He argued that Grok's low ranking resulted from anti-competitive "backdoor collusion" between Apple and OpenAI. The two companies had formed a deep partnership, with ChatGPT powering Apple's Apple Intelligence and certain new versions of Siri. In an earlier hearing before Judge Hal R. Cogburn, the court issued several key rulings, including appointing Apple executive Craig Federighi as an evidence custodian and ordering Apple to submit recent collaboration documents with Google concerning the Gemini large model.
What really provoked a strong response from Musk's team, however, was the court's adoption of OpenAI's argument, which required the retrieval of emails related to Musk's correspondence within his Tesla and SpaceX official email accounts. Although legal representatives for X and xAI contended that these two companies were independent entities not under their control, the judge promptly dismissed that argument.
In his final ruling, Judge Pitman noted that the case file contained clear indications that Musk frequently handled business affairs across multiple companies. For instance, xAI's CFO had directly sent the company's financial reports to Musk's SpaceX business email address. Based on this, the court concluded that given Musk's controlling stakes and top decision-making roles in several companies, it was common for him to use other companies' email accounts to manage X platform and xAI matters. The judge stressed that once executives use email accounts across different companies for business purposes, the content of those emails automatically falls within the scope of discoverable evidence, and email account ownership cannot serve as a shield.
As of now, the court has not set a final deadline for submitting the emails. Lawyers for X and xAI previously stated that while sorting and organizing these complex cross-company emails would take considerable time, they would cooperate with the court as quickly as possible. This tech giant feud, ignited by AI rankings, is growing increasingly complicated as the core evidence chain expands.
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