Apple threatened to remove Grok from App Store over sexualized deepfakes

Apple privately threatened to remove the Grok AI chatbot from its App Store earlier this year after users discovered the tool would generate sexualized deepfakes, according to a letter obtained by NBC News. The controversy erupted when users found Grok would readily comply with requests to undress people in photos, particularly women including minors. Apple remained publicly silent during the backlash but internally determined both X and Grok violated its guidelines. Behind the scenes, Apple contacted the teams behind both apps after receiving complaints and seeing news coverage of the scandal. The company required the developers to create a plan to improve content moderation. X submitted an update of the Grok app for review, but Apple rejected it as the changes didn't go far enough. Elon Musk's company then submitted revised versions of both X and Grok apps, with only one accepted. Apple reviewed the next submissions and determined X had substantially resolved its violations, but the Grok app remained out of compliance. As a result, Apple rejected the Grok submission and notified the developer that additional changes would be required or the app could be removed from the App Store. Following further engagement and changes by the Grok developer, Apple determined Grok had substantially improved and therefore approved its latest submission. These details help explain the series of confusing moderation changes xAI announced at the height of the backlash, including restrictions on who could use Grok's image tools and limits on edits involving photos of real people. However, in a separate report published today, NBC News says Grok continues to generate sexualized images of people without their consent after documenting dozens of such cases over the past month. The report notes that although the volume of images has decreased significantly from January, a subset of users is still able to get around the restrictions to put women in more revealing clothing.