Apple secretly threatened to pull Grok from the App Store over deepfake nudes

A letter Apple sent to US senators, obtained by NBC News, reveals that Apple rejected an initial Grok update and warned the app could be removed unless xAI made further changes. Only a second submission passed.

Apple privately threatened to remove Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot, from the App Store in January after Elon Musk’s company failed to adequately stop the app from generating non-consensual sexualised deepfakes.

The threat was not made public at the time, but a letter Apple sent to three US senators, obtained by NBC News, reveals that behind the scenes Apple was taking direct action, and that xAI’s first attempt to fix the problem was rejected as insufficient.

The controversy began in early 2026 when Grok’s image generation features were used to produce a flood of sexualised and non-consensual depictions of real women and, in some cases, minors, which were then shared on ...