Elon Musk Gets Dinged By X After Threatening To Ban OpenAI-Enabled Apple Products At Tesla, X & SpaceX; Scarlett Johansson Voice Dust-Up Cited

Dominic Patten
·4-min read

“Exactly”

That’s what Elon Musk replied today to a post on X that cast doubt on the integrity of OpenAI after its recent voiceover squabble with Scarlett Johansson. If that had been it, this would have been just another instance of the impulsive billionaire firing off again on the social media platform he’s owned since October 2022.

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But with Apple announcing Monday its dive into AI and a partnership with the once again Sam Altman-led organization that Musk co-founded (and in 2018 unsurprisingly fell out with), it was much more than that – at least for now.

In a series of posts, Musk declared that if the Tim Cook-run tech giant links arms with OpenAI, then all their products will be “banned” from X, Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company and any other company Musk owns. Dramatically, he added that it would be “an unacceptable security violation” if “Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level.”

“Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” Musk added.

In other posts, Musk waded into the mess OpenAI found itself in last month with two-time Oscar nominee Johansson’s lawyers sending a cease and desist letter to Altman’s company over an AI voice on ChatGPT that sounded a lot like the Her actress — even after OpenAI promised Johansson they wouldn’t use her voice if she didn’t want them too.

The thing is Apple isn’t getting totally in bed with OpenAI, at least that’s not the way Cook and crew pitched it Monday. Apple has proved a latecomer to the full scope of artificial intelligence, and today the CEO clearly was playing catch-up. To that end, Cook unveiled the sparkling Apple Intelligence as the AI clearinghouse for its devices and cloud services. Within that hierarchy, Apple also is bringing OpenAI and its ChatGPT into the fold with its operating systems.

Yes, for all the talk of privacy protections, the use of ChatGPT on Apple devices will shift over to OpenAI servers. However, with user and profile info kept hidden, the point of the partnership essentially is to answer the questions that Apple Intelligence can’t right now, Cook pledged.

A distinction may have been lost in Musk’s rage-baiting Monday.

A point that X itself made to the boss – twice.

Data harvesting aside for a moment, it should also be noted that Musk has gone after OpenAI before.

Back in March, the Tesla CEO sued the recently not-so-corporately steady OpenAI and its top executives for breach of contract. “This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world,” the filing in California state court in San Francisco stated.

In response, OpenAI mocked Musk’s lawsuit as “incoherent.” They exclaimed: “Were this case to proceed to discovery, the evidence would show that Musk supported a for-profit structure for OpenAI, to be controlled by Musk himself, and dropped the project when his wishes were not followed. Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself.”

The more recent backstory there is that Musk has his own AI rollout in the market.

Last month, the Boring Company boss raised an astonishing $6 billion in a new funding round for xAI. With hefty investment from Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company, startup xAI is now valued at over $20 billion. The company’s Grok chatbot is in beta testing and already available to paid subscribers of X Premium.

Of course, this all comes as Musk is facing an inflection point at Tesla with a June 13 shareholder meeting.

Up for vote is the contested $56 billion payout Musk was to receive from the car company and an official move of Tesla from Delaware to Texas. For obvious reasons, Musk wants the former to pass as well as the Lone Star latter (he lives in Texas most of the time now). A judge in the First State called the board approved payout “an unfathomable sum” and threw the meg-compensation out in a January ruling.

In April, Musk informed Tesla employees that the company would be slicing off around 10% of its over 140,000-strong staff to cut costs and save money.

Tesla shares dipped about 2% in trading on Monday, to close at $173.79.

Apple did not respond to request for comment today on Musk’s postings. If and when they do, this post will be updated.

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