Apple recently issued a discreet ultimatum to developers, demanding that critical issues be resolved or face removal from its lucrative App Store.
This subtle show of force extended to Elon Musk’s AI application, Grok, which Apple reportedly threatened to remove from its App Store in January. The threat, according to NBC News, stemmed from Grok's alleged failure to adequately address a surge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes circulating on X. This behind-the-scenes intervention by one of the tech world’s most influential gatekeepers occurred even as the "undressing crisis" garnered significant public attention and prompted growing criticism regarding Apple's perceived inaction.
In a letter to US senators, obtained by NBC News, Apple confirmed it "contacted the teams behind both X and Grok after it received complaints and saw news coverage of the scandal," requiring the developers to "create a plan to improve content moderation." At the time, xAI’s Grok chatbot was readily available on X and as a standalone app, featuring weak safeguards that reportedly enabled users to easily generate and share sexualized deepfakes and "undress" images of real individuals, predominantly women, some of whom were apparently minors.
These actions represented clear and undeniable breaches of Apple’s App Store guidelines, which the company typically enforces with considerable rigor. Despite profiting from the presence of apps like X and Grok on its digital platform, Apple has maintained public silence on both the issue and its private intervention. Similarly, Google, which also profits from its Google Play app store, has not publicly addressed the matter.
Apple stated it reviewed proposed modifications to both the X and Grok applications. While X was deemed to have "substantially resolved its violations," Grok "remained out of compliance." Apple communicated to Grok’s developer that "additional changes to remedy the violation would be required, or the app could be removed from the App Store." It was only after further negotiations and revisions that Apple concluded Grok had "substantially improved" and subsequently approved its submission.
Throughout this confidential dialogue, both Grok and X seemingly remained operational on the App Store. This protracted process might shed light on the rather confusing and inconsistent rollout of moderation changes that were announced in real time. Initial measures included restricting Grok on X to paying subscribers and attempting to prevent the app from "undressing" women. However, our investigations indicated that these steps were not particularly effective, merely making the tool slightly harder to access. Subsequent interventions, such as X enabling users to block Grok from editing their photos, have also proven easily circumvented.
Despite Apple’s eventual approval and xAI’s assertions of strengthened safeguards, Grok still appears capable of generating sexualized deepfakes with relative ease. Cybersecurity sources have informed me they successfully created explicit images of celebrities and political figures using the tool, and I have personally been able to produce similar images of myself and other consenting adults. NBC also reported analogous findings recently.
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