Elon Musk threatens to ban iPhones and MacBooks at his companies after Apple announces OpenAI partnership

• Elon Musk slammed Apple's new OpenAI partnership, threatening to ban Apple devices at his companies.
• He said visitors to his companies would have to store their Apple devices in a Faraday cage.

Elon Musk is beefing with Apple — again.

Apple announced at its Worldwide Developer's Conference on Monday that it would be integrating its new AI software, called Apple Intelligence, across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

It also separately announced a partnership with OpenAI, which includes the option to integrate ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o across some of its software, including its new and improved Siri. Apple said the ChatGPT integration would be available for free without an account in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year.

"When a user grants permission, Siri can tap into ChatGPT's broad world knowledge and present an answer directly," Apple said in the announcement.

Following the event, Elon Musk published a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, denouncing the partnership.

"If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies," Musk wrote. "That is an unacceptable security violation."

He said that if Apple moved forward with the OpenAI integration, anyone visiting his companies would have to store their Apple devices in a Faraday cage, a type of container that blocks electromagnetic transmissions.

Musk said in his posts that he was concerned about Apple partnering with a third-party AI that it "doesn't understand" and "can't themselves create."

The billionaire added that it was "patently absurd that Apple isn't smart enough to make their own AI" but could ensure OpenAI would protect users' security and privacy.

"Apple has no clue what's actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI," Musk said, without adding any evidence to back up his claim. "They're selling you down the river."

Apple said in its announcement of the partnership that "protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT," adding that device IP addresses would be kept private and that OpenAI wouldn't store requests. The announcement also said users who chose to connect their accounts would be under ChatGPT's data-use policies.

Musk's distaste for OpenAI, which he cofounded and helped finance, is nothing new. The billionaire has a public feud with CEO Sam Altman and has sued OpenAI, accusing it of betraying its original mission of being open-sourced and "developing AGI for the benefit of humanity."

Since parting ways with OpenAI, Musk has launched his own rival AI company, xAI, and a ChatGPT rival named Grok.

Musk has also clashed with Apple and CEO Tim Cook in the past, though the two seemed to patch things up when Cook invited Musk for a tour of Apple HQ back in November 2022.

But on Monday, Musk responded to a post from Cook that promoted Apple Intelligence, voicing his displeasure.

"Don't want it," the Tesla CEO said. "Either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies."

OpenAI and Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.