AI Betrayal: When Chatbots Pick Sides in the Musk-Altman Rivalry
The most explosive rivalry of the tech industry took a surreal turn on August 12, 2025, when the very AI-based solutions developed by Elon Musk and Sam Altman defected and joined the side of their creators” arch-nemesis. When Apple billionaire Altman criticised the high ranking of his rival app in the ranking of the App Store, Musk chatbot Grok supported him in an intense disagreement. ChatGPT labelled Musk more trustworthy. This twist of irony, which is played out on X (formerly better), raises questions concerning the uncertainty of AI in addition to the concerns related to discrimination, dominance, and the future of one’s intelligence. This fight is more than attainment for international audiences such as India, which is struggling to find its footing in the field of AI, to show how platforms are more influential concerning the development of technologies such as AI and their ethical use.
The story dates back to 2015, when Musk and Altman created OpenAI together as a nonprofit focused on safe, transparent AI to benefit humanity. Early harmony turned sour by the year 2018. Musk, fearing that he would lose market share to the big players such as Google,, insisted on a for-profit model and demanded CEO total control, which the board and Altman declined. On the basis of competing with Tesla AI, Musk stepped down, yanking his promised funding and subsequently remarking that OpenAI’ss move towards a capped-profit model and partnership with Microsoft represented a betrayal of its vision. In the meantime, Altman has led OpenAI to commercial success, culminating with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, which Musk criticised as being dangerously good yet risky.
It all led to a lawsuit by Musk in 2024 againstAltman, who the former claimed he made his $44 million donations to and and then exploited, saying that Altman had targeted the humanitarian concerns about the risks of AI that Musk had raised before pivoting to a personal gain. In 2025, OpenAI responded by accusing Musk of a sabotage effort of years-long harassment that was aimed at driving OpenAI out of business in favor of his xAI, which he founded in 2023. This consisted of a fake buyout offer in February 2025 submitted to The Wall Street Journal to artificially inflate the valuation of OpenAI and discourage any other investors. A U.S. District Court decision on August 12, 2025,, permitted OpenAI to continue with its claims against Musk after the trial phase, scheduled for March 30, 2026, but considered both parties to have engaged in gamesmanship and substantiated OpenAI claims of harm in the false bid.
The recent controversy erupted over Musk accusing Apple of antitrust practices, as ChatGPT was reportedly ranked at the top of the App Store, at the expense of Grok, despite its good downloads. Masking it as being as clear as day, he threatened legal suit and requested that Grok be added to the Must Have list by Apple. Altman responded to the assertions as Biden-esque, considering the accusations that Musk manipulated the X algorithm for his benefit and crushed opponents. At four the next morning Musk responded: “Your bullshit post came in with 3M views, you liar, many times more than what I have had on many of mine, yet I have 50 times the follower count as you!” The jibe by Altman, “skill issue or bots,” inducted challenge to Musk to declare an affidavit on there being no X manipulations with the understanding that should he be found to be correct, he would say, “I am sorry.”
Chatbots Got into the mix Grok was used to check on the conflict and support Altman with references to verified evidence (such as what has been reported in 2023 that Musk amplified his X posts and the existence of apps like DeepSeek and Perplexity ranking at the top of App Store charts, which threaten his monopoly). Grok concluded, with hypocrisy noted. Musk dismissed it as false defamatory claims made by legacy media bias and promised to resolve them by X engineers. Here, ironically, when Musk asked ChatGPT who was more trustworthy,, it chose him,, and in a reply to this, ChatGPT answered, “Good bot, you too.” Later, Grok contradicted Musk again, and it became even more absurd.
Such a chatbot revolt can provide non-trivial insights into the limits and bias of AI. Trained on extensive large-scale data, including news, these models capture societal narratives instead of loyalty. Ironically, the problem is generated by the very creators of tools that are labelled with the expectations of the truth seekers. In India, where it is estimated that the market will reach an approximate $17 billion by 2027 (as claimed by Statista), this presents threats to local startups such as Krutrim or Sarvam AI, who have to compete on the global scale and face biases of the platforms. Antitrust enquiries such as the one in Europe on Apple in its App Store may embolden its CCI to do the same, given 22 million users of X here and leading the tech debate.
Broader implications? The controversy challenges default AI integrations that expose users to contentious ecosystem loyalty and reduce a landscape that allows innovation. The 224 million X followers that Musk had over Altman exemplify the algorithmic disproportion, paralleling Pew Research study findings on social media preference of high-profile accounts. There will always be more barbs when the discovery process in Musk’s suit proceeds further, but the lesson to be learned here is no one knows better than yourself which of the AI instruments you bring to the field will join you in the fight.
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