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Elon Musks AI company xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in federal court on Monday, alleging they conspired to freeze out competition in both the smartphone and AI chatbot markets. But xAIs lawyers face an uphill battle in proving that Apples defaulting to ChatGPT on iOS harms consumers. Apple has struggled to add its own advanced AI featuresincluding a chatbotto its operating systems for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. At its June 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple instead announced an exclusive agreement with OpenAI, making ChatGPT the default chatbot option on its devices. Musk and xAI argue that the deal hurts rivals, including xAIs Grok chatbot. Working in tandem, Defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing, reads the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from perpetrating their anticompetitive scheme and to recover billions in damages. Currently, iPhone users who want Grok must download its stand-alone app. Musk and xAI contend that Apple should be compelled to let users easily select any chatbot. While Apple has spoken about integrating other models such as Googles Gemini and Anthropics Claude, it has not acted on those talks so far. The suit raises antitrust issues, but recent precedent makes such cases hard to win. Courts typically judge them based on consumer benefitsuch as product quality and costrather than on harm to competition alone. (By one estimate, ChatGPT accounted for more than 80% of AI chatbot visits as of July.) Its also consistent with what antitrust laws are about, says Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. Just because ChatGPT has 80% of the market doesnt mean that thats antitrust. The law doesnt want to punish companies for products that consumers want. OpenAI was first to market with a large language model-driven chatbot in late 2022, with ChatGPT hitting 100 million users in just two months. For many, ChatGPT became synonymous with AI chatbot well before its Apple deal. Kreps notes that xAIs lawyers must show the Apple-OpenAI partnership meaningfully raised prices for consumers, reduced innovation, or blocked consumer choice, which is a high bar to cross. The court may also question xAIs standing, since it is a direct competitor. The lawsuit also accuses Apple of favoring OpenAI in its App Store. “If not for its exclusive deal with OpenAI, Apple would have no reason to refrain from more prominently featuring the X app and the Grok app,” it claims. Musk previously threatened to sue Apple, saying it was impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store. The new filing continues Musks long-running feud with OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left its board in 2018, sued the company last year for pursuing profit despite its nonprofit structure. A recent filing revealed Musk tried to buy OpenAIs core assets earlier this year, even approaching Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about a joint bid. The venue of xAI’s lawsuit also matters quite a bit here. Companies often file in the Northern District of Texas, where cases are frequently assigned to a single judge, allowing for judge shopping. That court falls under the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which can reduce the risk of unfavorable outcomes in antitrust cases. It also has a record of producing rulings that quickly rise to the Supreme Court. Politics could also influence the outcome. The cases visibility could lead the Trump administration to intervene, with President Donald Trump potentially siding with Musk (though the two men certainly have their differences) on Truth Social and calling Apples deal a monopoly. That, in turn, could prompt the Federal Trade Commission or Justice Department to investigate or file a brief urging Apple to stop favoring ChatGPT. But Kreps warns that the administrations stance is unpredictable. At one time, Trump courted tech industry players in part by promising minimal regulation, but then he’s also stoked populist resentment toward “West Coast elites” who run “liberal” tech companies. Given Trumps split loyalties and his fraught relationship with Musk, the safer political move might be to stay out of it. But whether Trump follows that advice is another matter.
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E-Commerce
Turning an idea into working software has never been easier, faster, or more affordable. Thanks to a new class of AI-assisted tools, a movement known as vibe coding is reshaping how software gets built. If you’re not familiar with the term, vibe coding refers to the use of natural language tools that dramatically lower the technical barrier to software development. You describe what you wantliterally, just say itand the AI writes the code, building your app before your eyes. From there, you can give feedback, tweak results, and refine the product through simple, back-and-forth interaction. This shift empowers solopreneurs and business owners to focus on outcomes without getting bogged down in engineering. More importantly, it removes the steep cost and complexity once required just to get a prototype off the ground. Heres why vibe coding could be a game-changer for founders and small to midsize businessesand where its limits still lie. The upside: What vibe coding makes possible Build MVPs in hours, not weeks Before vibe coding, even testing an idea required weeks of planning and a sizable budget. Today, you can build a working minimum viable product in an afternoon. That means faster feedback loops, quicker iteration, and smarter go/no-go decisions. Move faster, pivot smarter With vibe coding, you can quickly test ideas in the market, pivot based on customer feedback, and invest engineering resources only in what gains traction. Its a more agile, lower-risk way to innovate. Empower internal teams Need a custom reporting dashboard? An onboarding tool? A resource scheduler? With vibe coding, nontechnical teams can create light apps that solve internal pain pointsno dev team required. Level the playing field for founders The broader impact? More ideas get a shot. More small businesses can take root. More diverse voices can be heard. For investors, it means concepts can be vetted earlier and with more clarityleading to smarter funding bets and higher odds of success. The limits: What vibe coding cant (yet) replace Of course, the obvious question arises: If a tool that once required a five-figure budget can now be built in an afternoon, are software professionals getting coded out of a job? The short answer: no. What vibe coding changes is when and why you bring in professional developersnot whether you need them. It democratizes access and speeds up early exploration. But there are important limits that still require experienced teams. Scalability becomes a bottleneck Vibe-coded apps are great for prototyping. But when you need scalehandling real users, integrating APIs, managing payments, maintaining uptimeyoull hit limits fast. For growth and complexity, youll need real engineers. Quality control still requires human judgment AI doesnt understand your edge cases. It doesnt anticipate compliance requirements or subtle business rules. Production-grade software needs thoughtful architecture, thorough testing, and rigorous review. Thats human territory. Security isnt baked in The moment you handle user dataeven something as basic as an emailyou step into legal and ethical territory. Most vibe-coded apps arent designed with secure auth flows, proper data storage, or access controls. Thats not a criticismits just not their purpose. Public-facing tools need professional-grade security. Bottom line: Vibe coding changes the game, but it doesnt replace the players. It simply lets more people step onto the field. A real-world example: My mom, a wedding venue, and an afternoon app My parents own a wedding venue, which theyve built over the years on a picturesque Midwest ranch. Their propertythe forest chapel, the refurbished historic barnits phenomenal. At the same time, this is a competitive industry, and they are constantly looking for new ways to add appeal: They built a stone bridge to a charming island they call Yonder; they raised a miniature donkey named Mojito who wears flowers and saddles beer for the reception. Its all good, but when budget is a primary concern, its unclear whether these added features will result in more yesses. My moms been doing this for a while. She knows that the primary concerns for couples are cost, sure, logistics, and the million little details and decisions that define both. I assured her that this is the sort of problem software can solve. So, the last time she visited, we vibe-coded a wedding planning app together on Lovable. It allows couples to mix, match, visualize, and budget, all on a single, simple interface. Its fun, it gives them transparency, and it delivers ease. Its making a difference for her business already, and it took us a single afternoon. A few key also trues from my moms example: Seeing a possible software solution and how it would work required mea career UX designer and professional software architect. The tool is private, used during venue toursnot something publicly hosted or scaled. The app uses static data, like a visual calculator. If we needed real-time bookings, payments, or user accounts, wed need proper backend infrastructureand a professional team. This is where vibe coding shines: rapid ideas, small use cases, single-user workflows. Its not the whole productit’s the first spark. Final thought: Get codingeven if you dont get coding I live in San Francisco, where it feels like everyone has an app idea. But I suspect millions of people across the country have equally brilliant conceptsideas that could improve their communities, businesses, or lives. Now, nothing stands in your way. If software shapes our worldand it increasingly doesthen its crucial that people from all walks of life help shape software. That starts by building. Spend an afternoon in Lovable, Replit, Bubble, or any other vibe-coding tool. If youre not sure which to use, describe your idea to ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask which platform fits best. Your first version doesnt need to be perfect. But it does need to exist. I cant wait to see where your experimentation leads. Lindsey Witmer Collins is CEO and founder of WLCM App Studio and Scribbly Inc.
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E-Commerce
Taylor Swift posted an announcement of her engagement to Travis Kelce at around noon E.T. on August 26. By 12:30 p.m., Sour Patch Kids, Duolingo, and Buffalo Wild Wings had all tweeted about it. In todays era of reactive digital marketing, brands with wildly successful social media presences tend to echo the same mantra: Its all about speed. Companies like Duolingo, Amtrak, and Heinz have scored some of their most successful posts by chiming in on whatever discourse is currently dominating X feeds. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) Brands react to Taylor Swift’s engagement For most brands, X is the platform of choice for rolling out the quickest possible response to a piece of breaking news, given the low lift required. Today, brands from across a wide range of categories came out in droves on the platform to offer their two cents on the Swift and Kelce engagement. SUDDENLY I BELIEVE IN LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Sour Patch Kids wrote. but when will it be your spanish teacher's turn https://t.co/WGQpJig8oq— Duolingo (@duolingo) August 26, 2025 But when will it be your Spanish teacher’s turn, Duolingo quipped in response to Swifts Instagram caption, Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married. “WE WILL CATER THE WEDDING, Buffalo Wild Wings offered. It’s a love story, and baby she said yes, Crumbl cookies wrote above a pairing of cookies clearly meant to represent the future newlyweds. Local man and his new fiancée stun in engagement pics. pic.twitter.com/r5rauPDA8g— City of Cleveland (@CityofCleveland) August 26, 2025 Even the city of Cleveland couldnt pass up the opportunity to alert its followers to the news with a tweet thats already scored more than 20,000 likesa startling sum compared with the accounts usual posts, which tend to net less than 10 likes apiece. [Screenshot: courtesy of the author] Other brands tried different avenues to turn Swifts announcement into their own win, including GrubHub, which sent a push notification to customers reading: And we say yes to takeout. Order your favorites today. WE WILL CATER THE WEDDING— Buffalo Wild Wings (@BWWings) August 26, 2025 Why is Buffalo Wild Wings congratulating Taylor Swift? For many of these brands, this quick turnaround content geared toward Swifties is already taking off. Buffalo Wild Wings tweet, for example, is its second-most successful post of the monthbehind only its post celebrating Swifts upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl. After Swift announced the new album on August 13, brands similarly used the news as fodder for their own posts, from Elmo to United Airlines and Tic Tac. On LinkedIn, the trend stirred up a discussion among marketers about whether reactive marketing is truly worthwhile. One post by social media strategist Kieran Hughes that called the strategy lazy marketing garnered nearly 2,000 reactions and 400 comments. Sesame Street, FedEx, Dunkin’, airlineseveryone jumping on the same bandwagon within hours. And I can’t help but think, when did we decide that being first to react was more important than being strategically relevant? Hughes wrote. This isn’t cultural marketing. It’s cultural desperation. Real cultural marketing means understanding why something matters, not just that it’s trending. On the one hand, Hughes is touching on a real concern for both social media users and brand managers. “Bandwagon” marketing has become an unavoidable trope over the last several years, and when it’s overplayed, it can easily come off as annoying, low effort, and even cringeworthy. But on the other hand, when done correctly, posts like these can drum up outsized engagement from larger fan bases that wouldn’t normally interact with a brand. In a direct response to Hughes, marketer Ashley Rutstein, who runs the account @stuffaboutadvertising, noted that many of the posts cited in his critique had outperformed those brands other recent content: Buffalo Wild Wings response on X notched 10,000 likes, compared with its average in the hundreds; Scrub Daddys Instagram post attracted nearly 100,000 likes; United Airlines Instagram post drew more than 500 comments; and FedExs tweet was its most-liked post all year. Brand posts appealing to the attention economy (especially when it comes to one of the internets most beloved pop stars) work, whether we like it or notand the immediate reaction to Swifts engagement is yet another data point to prove it. /p>
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E-Commerce
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