Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Apple Devices in His Companies: Here’s Why

Elon Musk is taking his fight against OpenAI to another level. After announcing a collaboration between Apple and ChatGPT developer OpenAI for “Apple Intelligence,” Musk threatened to ban all Apple devices from 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 breach.”

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

Musk’s complicated threat

Musk didn’t stop at banning employees from Apple devices. He even did not spare the guests, saying that they would not be allowed to bring Apple devices onto the company’s premises.

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

Musk continued his threat, stating that “it is patently absurd” that a company like Apple is unable to create its own artificial intelligence, but is somehow able to ensure that OpenAI will protect the security and privacy of its customers.

“Apple has no idea what’s actually going on when it gives your data to OpenAI. They sell you down the river,” Musk added.

Musk’s battle with OpenAI

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, cut ties with the company and sued it shortly after ChatGPT launched. Musk accused OpenAI of abandoning its original nonprofit mission and reserving advanced AI technology for private clients.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit calls for CEO Sam Altman and co-founder and CEO Greg Brockman to return any profits made from the business.

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

In the emails, Musk admitted that the company needs to make large sums of money to fund its computing resources and artificial intelligence ambitions, which contradicts his recent claims.

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

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

Grok is about to take on ChatGPT

In response to ChatGPT, Musk’s AI venture has developed advanced AI technologies, including language processing models. Launching in November 2023, Grok is available to X Premium Plus subscribers, but Musk plans to make it free to anyone.

In its latest update, Grok has integrated multimodal inputs, allowing users to upload images and receive text responses. Grok is different in many ways from ChatGPT, which Musk says is too woke. Grok has “a bit of wit,” as Musk put it, and the chatbot is not afraid to answer questions on sensitive topics and use slightly vulgar language.

Moreover, Grok’s biggest advantage is its ability to access X data in real time, which allows it to provide more precise and timely responses, unlike ChatGPT. In a recent blog post, xAI stated that Grok 1.5 bridges the gap to GPT-4 in various benchmarks.