Elon Musk’s threat to ban iPhones is being fact-checked by his own company

Elon Musk has threatened to ban Apple devices from his businesses, although his fear appears to stem from a misunderstanding over the iPhone maker’s recently announced partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The tech billionaire – owner or leader of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and

In a post on

He also called the collaboration “extremely concerning,” although some of his comments about X were flagged for “misrepresenting what was actually announced.”

His comments came less than two hours after Apple unveiled a host of new artificial intelligence features – which it called “Apple Intelligence” – at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California. A separate announcement revealed an update to Apple’s virtual assistant Siri that will allow it to pass some questions to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.

The new feature will be integrated into Apple’s operating system later this year, available in Siri and in a new system called ‘Writing Tools’.

In joint announcements, Apple and OpenAI both stated that ChatGPT integration will bring strong privacy protections that would prevent personal data from being compromised and provide consent options for users.

Apple claimed it was “setting a new standard for privacy in AI,” hiring independent experts to inspect the code to verify that data from iPhone, iPad and Mac is cryptographically transmitted and stored to ensure security.

“Privacy protections are built in for users accessing ChatGPT – their IP addresses are hidden and OpenAI does not store requests,” the tech giant said. “ChatGPT’s data usage policy applies to users who choose to link their account.”

OpenAI echoed Apple in its announcement, stating that “privacy protections are built in when accessing ChatGPT within Siri and Writing Tools,” adding that “requests are not stored by OpenAI and users’ IP addresses are invisible.”

Mr Musk continued to question Apple’s partnership with OpenAI in the hours after the WWDC keynote announcement, describing it as “extremely concerning” and taking issue with those defending Apple’s privacy credentials.

“Apple using the words ‘protect your privacy’ while handing over your data to a third party AI they don’t understand and can’t create themselves is not protecting privacy *at all*,” he wrote on X in response to a post by popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

Musk’s post was flagged by X’s content moderation system, which noted that his claim “misrepresents what was actually announced by Apple.”

“Apple Intelligence is Apple’s own creation, and ChatGPT is completely separate and controlled by the user,” the note said.

Mr. Brownlee also responded, writing that he had spoken to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who said no data is sent to OpenAI without explicit user consent.

Despite this, Musk continued to claim that OpenAI would siphon user data from Apple through its ChatGPT functionality, sharing a meme illustrating the idea.

The entrepreneur also hinted that he planned to build his own phone, writing that it was “not out of the question” that his social media company would collaborate with Samsung to produce a privacy-focused ‘X Phone’.