{"id":393304,"date":"2026-04-15T11:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/393304\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T11:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:41:10","slug":"apple-threatened-to-pull-musks-ai-grok-from-app-store-over-sexualized-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/393304\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple threatened to pull Musk\u2019s AI Grok from App Store over sexualized deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a letter obtained<\/a> by NBC News, Apple told US senators it \u201ccontacted the teams behind both X and Grok after it received complaints and saw news coverage of the scandal\u201d and demanded that the developers \u201ccreate a plan to improve content moderation.\u201d At the time, xAI\u2019s chatbot Grok was freely accessible on X and as a standalone app, with flimsy safeguards that allowed users to easily generate and share sexualized deepfakes and \u201cundress\u201d images of real people, disproportionately women and some of them apparently minors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we reported at the time,<\/a> these were flagrant and unambiguous violations of App Store guidelines it often applies with an iron fist. Apple, which profits from having apps like X and Grok on its digital store, has not spoken publicly about the issue or its behind-the-scenes intervention. Google, through its Google Play app store, profits similarly and has also not commented publicly on the matter.<\/p>\n

Apple said it reviewed proposed changes to the X and Grok apps. While the company concluded X had \u201csubstantially resolved its violations,\u201d Grok \u201cremained out of compliance.\u201d Apple said it warned the developer that \u201cadditional changes to remedy the violation would be required, or the app could be removed from the App Store.\u201d Only after further back-and-forth did Apple determine Grok had \u201csubstantially improved\u201d and approved its submission.<\/p>\n

Despite Apple\u2019s approval and xAI\u2019s claims it has tightened safeguards, Grok still appears to be able to generate sexualized deepfakes with relative ease. Cybersecurity sources told me they have been able to create explicit images of celebrities and political figures using the tool, and I have been able to produce similar images of myself<\/a> and other consenting adults. NBC also reported<\/a> similar findings yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a letter obtained by NBC News, Apple told US senators it \u201ccontacted the teams behind both X…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[345,670,85,46,43,920,125,7963],"class_list":{"0":"post-393304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}