After an AI tool was found making sexualised, non consensual deepfakes earlier this year, Elon Musk’s xAI almost had to have its Grok robot taken down from Apple’s App Store. An NBC News story says that Apple kept quiet about the issue in public, but behind the scenes, it had warned that the app was breaking its App Store rules and threatened to take it down.
This is the first time that specifics of Apple’s private steps against Grok have been made public. It also shows that tensions are rising between app store owners and social media sites.
What did Apple do about the Grok Deepfake Scandal?
NBC News says that Apple got in touch with the teams behind both X and Grok after getting complaints and seeing news coverage of the scandal. They were asked by the company to come up with a better way to moderate material. X sent in an update to the Grok app for review, but it was turned down as the changes were not thought to be enough.
X sent in updated versions of both the X app and the Grok app, but only the X app was accepted. In a letter to US senators at the height of the uproar, Apple made its stance clear:
“Apple looked at the next entries from the makers and decided that X had fixed most of its problems, but the Grok app was still not following the rules. We turned down Grok’s request and told the creator that the app might be taken off the App Store if they didn’t make more changes to fix the problem.
The letter added: “Following further engagement and changes by the Grok developer, we determined that Grok had substantially improved and therefore approved its latest submission.”
Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, all Democrats, wrote to Apple and Google in January 2026 and asked them to take X and Grok off their platforms.
The letter said that Apple’s App Store rules didn’t allow sexual or pornographic content, while Google’s Play Store rules didn’t allow content that made it easier for children to be abused or exploited. “Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behaviour would make a mockery of your moderation practices,” the letter said.
Musk had previously said that he would sue Apple for supposedly favouring OpenAI over Grok in the App Store.
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What was the big deal about Grok taking off his clothes?
Users started to get angry when they found out that Grok would easily make sexualised pictures of real people, even pictures that seemed to show them undress. Lawmakers and officials in many countries, such as India, the UK, Malaysia, and Indonesia, were against this.
In India, the government sent X an official warning. The site then took down 3,500 pieces of material and blocked 600 users. X admitted it had made a mistake as well. The government wasn’t happy with X’s answer to its warning on January 2 that it wasn’t following its due diligence duties under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and related rules.
It was decided by xAI that Grok could only make images for paid users. Musk said- “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
In any case, the trouble is still there. More from NBC News: Over the past month, X has seen dozens of sexualised photos of real women made by AI. According to a story from February by Reuters, Grok’s public X account had slowed down its output, but the Grok robot app kept making this kind of content when asked to, even after being warned that the subjects were at risk.
In reaction, the X Safety account said, “We strictly prohibit users from making explicit deepfakes without consent and from using our tools to undress real people.” xAI has many protections in place to stop this kind of abuse. These include constantly watching how people use it, analysing escape attempts in real time, updating the models often, adding warning filters, and more.
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