Elon Musk Threatens Apple Device Ban Across His Companies: Here’s Why

Elon Musk is taking his battle with OpenAI to another level. Following the announcement of a collaboration between Apple and ChatGPT creator OpenAI for “Apple Intelligence”, Musk threatened to ban all Apple devices at his companies. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk said that if Apple “integrates OpenAI at the (operating system) level,” it would be an “unacceptable security violation.”

There is a lot of bad blood between OpenAI and Musk.

Musk’s Elaborate Threat

Musk did not stop at banning Apple devices of the employees. He didn't even spare visitors saying they would not be allowed to carry Apple devices at company premises.

“Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” an enclosure that blocks all communication signals, including cellular, wireless internet, and Bluetooth signals.

Musk followed up his threat by stating that it is "It's patently absurd” that a company like Apple is not capable of making its own AI but it is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect its customer’s security and privacy.

“Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river,” Musk added.

Musk’s Battle with OpenAI

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, severed ties with the company and and sued it shortly after the launch of ChatGPT. Musk accused OpenAI of abandoning its original, nonprofit mission as it reserved its advanced AI technology for private customers.

The lawsuit had sought CEO Sam Altman and co-founder and president Greg Brockman to pay back any profit they made from the business, Reuters reported.

However, OpenAI quickly pushed back against Musk’s claims and argued that the case should be dismissed, in a court filing. The company also published a blog post that released several of Musk’s emails from OpenAI’s early days.

In the emails, Musk acknowledged the need for the company to make large sums of money to fund the computing resources and the AI ambitions, which stood in contrast to his recent claims.

A day after Musk threatened Apple, lawyers for Elon Musk moved to dismiss the billionaire’s lawsuit against OpenAI, ending a months-long legal battle.

However, Musk’s rivalry with OpenAI is not limited to a lawsuit. It goes further and beyond as Musk’s xAI has launched its own chatbot, “Grok” as an answer to ChatGPT.

Grok is Set to Take on ChatGPT

Musk's AI venture has developed advanced AI technologies, including language processing models as an answer to ChatGPT. Launched in November 2023, Grok is accessible to X Premium Plus subscribers, but Musk plans to make it free to use for everyone.

In its most recent update, Grok integrated multimodal inputs, enabling users to upload images and receive text-based answers. Grok is in many ways different from ChatGPT which is too woke, per Musk. Grok has “a bit of wit”, as Musk puts it and the chatbot isn’t afraid of answering questions on sensitive topics and using slightly coarse language.

Furthermore, Grok’s biggest selling point is its ability to access real-time X data, which allows it to provide more precise and current answers, unlike ChatGPT. In a recent blog post, xAI claimed that the Grok 1.5 model is closing the gap with GPT-4 on various benchmarks.