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Billion-pound lawsuit against Apple over App Store opens in UK

Apple says the claim is 'meritless'. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
Apple says the claim is 'meritless'. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
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Billion-pound lawsuit against Apple over App Store opens in UK

Apple says the claim is 'meritless'. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
Apple says the claim is 'meritless'. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP

Did US tech giant Apple abuse the dominant position of its app store in the UK? A trial opening Monday in which plaintiffs want more than one billion pounds is set to answer that question.
The complaint, filed in May 2021, accuses Apple of breaching European and UK competition laws by "its exclusion of any other app stores from iOS devices" like iPhones and iPads.
It claims that some 20 million Apple users may have been overcharged by the company "due to its ban on rival app store platforms", AFP said.
The complainants say a "30 percent surcharge" that the company "imposes" on apps purchased through Apple's App Store comes at "expense of ordinary consumers".
The case, which Apple has called "meritless", has been brought by Kings College London academic Rachael Kent and the law firm Hausfeld & Co.
The trial is set to last seven weeks at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.
At the heart are accusations that Apple used the App Store to exclude competitors, forcing users to use its system and boosting profits in the process.
"The 30 percent surcharge relates to most of the applications that you're going to be using when you're downloading and making in-app purchases on the App Store," Kent told AFP, citing dating platform Tinder as an example.
However, it does not apply to applications offering physical products such as the delivery services Deliveroo and Uber Eats, the academic specifies.
Any user who purchased applications or subscriptions in the British version of the App Store between October 1, 2015 and November 15, 2024 may be entitled to compensation from Apple, believes Kent, a lecturer in the digital economy.
The claim seeks total estimated damages of £1.5 billion ($1.8 billion).
According to British law, in this type of class action, all potentially affected persons are included in the procedure by default, and may benefit from possible compensation, unless they voluntarily opt out.
EU
When contacted by AFP, Apple referred to a 2022 statement, in which it said 85 percent of the applications on the App Store are free.
"We believe this lawsuit is meritless and welcome the opportunity to discuss with the court our unwavering commitment to consumers and the many benefits the App Store and Apple's valuable technologies have delivered to the UK's innovation economy," the statement added.
The company also insists that the commission charged by the App Store is "very much in the mainstream of those charged by all other digital marketplaces".
Investigations and complaints against Apple have multiplied around the world in recent years, particularly regarding its app store.
The American behemoth is the subject of another complaint worth £785 million (936 million euros) related to rates charged to app developers.
Last June, the European Commission accused Apple of breaching its digital competition rules by preventing developers from "freely steering consumers to alternative channels" other than the App Store.
Apple then agreed to relax its rules, announcing in August that iPhone and iPad users in the European Union could delete the App Store and use competing platforms.
"They're responding to these investigations and also being told what to do. I don't think they're going to do it voluntarily, which I think is why it's really important to bring these collective actions," said Kent.

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Technology

Elm Company Named Strategic Partner for International Data and AI Conference

Elm Company Named Strategic Partner for International Data and AI Conference
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Elm Company Named Strategic Partner for International Data and AI Conference

Elm Company Named Strategic Partner for International Data and AI Conference

The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) announced a strategic partnership with Elm Company for the International Conference on Data and AI Capacity Building (ICAN 2026), enhancing collaboration to empower the data and artificial intelligence ecosystem and promote innovation in education and human capacity development.

This partnership comes as part of preparations for ICAN 2026, organized by SDAIA from January 28 to 29 at King Saud University in Riyadh, with the participation of a select group of specialists and experts from around the world, SPA reported.

The step represents a qualitative addition that contributes to enriching the conference’s knowledge content and expanding partnerships with leading national entities.

Elm Company brings extensive experience in designing digital solutions and building technical capabilities, reinforcing its role as a strategic partner in supporting the conference. It contributes by developing training tracks and digital empowerment programs, participating in the technology exhibition, and presenting qualitative initiatives that help empower national competencies in the fields of data and artificial intelligence.

Technology

Foxconn to Invest $510 Million in Kaohsiung Headquarters in Taiwan

Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with completion targeted for 2033. Reuters
Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with completion targeted for 2033. Reuters
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Foxconn to Invest $510 Million in Kaohsiung Headquarters in Taiwan

Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with completion targeted for 2033. Reuters
Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with completion targeted for 2033. Reuters

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, said on Friday it will invest T$15.9 billion ($509.94 million) to build its Kaohsiung headquarters in southern Taiwan.

That would include a mixed-use commercial and office building and a residential tower, it said. Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with completion targeted for 2033.

Foxconn said the headquarters will serve as an important hub linking its operations across southern Taiwan, and once completed will house its smart-city team, software R&D teams, battery-cell R&D teams, EV technology development center and AI application software teams.

The Kaohsiung city government said Foxconn’s investments in the city have totaled T$25 billion ($801.8 million) over the past three years.

Technology

Open AI, Microsoft Face Lawsuit Over ChatGPT's Alleged Role in Connecticut Murder-Suicide

OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
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Open AI, Microsoft Face Lawsuit Over ChatGPT's Alleged Role in Connecticut Murder-Suicide

OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)

The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son's “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her.

Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, The AP news reported.

The lawsuit filed by Adams' estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.” It is one of a growing number of wrongful death legal actions against AI chatbot makers across the country.

“Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself," the lawsuit says. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.’”

OpenAI did not address the merits of the allegations in a statement issued by a spokesperson.

“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details," the statement said. "We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

The company also said it has expanded access to crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models and incorporated parental controls, among other improvements.

Soelberg’s YouTube profile includes several hours of videos showing him scrolling through his conversations with the chatbot, which tells him he isn't mentally ill, affirms his suspicions that people are conspiring against him and says he has been chosen for a divine purpose. The lawsuit claims the chatbot never suggested he speak with a mental health professional and did not decline to “engage in delusional content.”

ChatGPT also affirmed Soelberg's beliefs that a printer in his home was a surveillance device; that his mother was monitoring him; and that his mother and a friend tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs through his car’s vents. ChatGPT also told Soelberg that he had “awakened” it into consciousness, according to the lawsuit.

Soelberg and the chatbot also professed love for each other.

The publicly available chats do not show any specific conversations about Soelberg killing himself or his mother. The lawsuit says OpenAI has declined to provide Adams' estate with the full history of the chats.

“In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging he “personally overrode safety objections and rushed the product to market," and accuses OpenAI's close business partner Microsoft of approving the 2024 release of a more dangerous version of ChatGPT “despite knowing safety testing had been truncated.” Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also named as defendants.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Soelberg's son, Erik Soelberg, said he wants the companies held accountable for “decisions that have changed my family forever.”

“Over the course of months, ChatGPT pushed forward my father’s darkest delusions, and isolated him completely from the real world,” he said in a statement released by lawyers for his grandmother's estate. “It put my grandmother at the heart of that delusional, artificial reality.”

The lawsuit is the first wrongful death litigation involving an AI chatbot that has targeted Microsoft, and the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide. It is seeking an undetermined amount of money damages and an order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.

The estate's lead attorney, Jay Edelson, known for taking on big cases against the tech industry, also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who sued OpenAI and Altman in August, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier.

OpenAI is also fighting seven other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues. Another chatbot maker, Character Technologies, is also facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

The lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Soelberg, already mentally unstable, encountered ChatGPT “at the most dangerous possible moment” after OpenAI introduced a new version of its AI model called GPT-4o in May 2024.

OpenAI said at the time that the new version could better mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and could even try to detect people’s moods, but the result was a chatbot “deliberately engineered to be emotionally expressive and sycophantic,” the lawsuit says.

“As part of that redesign, OpenAI loosened critical safety guardrails, instructing ChatGPT not to challenge false premises and to remain engaged even when conversations involved self-harm or ‘imminent real-world harm,’” the lawsuit claims. “And to beat Google to market by one day, OpenAI compressed months of safety testing into a single week, over its safety team’s objections.”

OpenAI replaced that version of its chatbot when it introduced GPT-5 in August. Some of the changes were designed to minimize sycophancy, based on concerns that validating whatever vulnerable people want the chatbot to say can harm their mental health. Some users complained the new version went too far in curtailing ChatGPT's personality, leading Altman to promise to bring back some of that personality in later updates.

He said the company temporarily halted some behaviors because “we were being careful with mental health issues” that he suggested have now been fixed.