Apple Addresses X and Grok Sexualized Deepfakes in Senate Letter

Apple privately threatened to remove Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence application, Grok, from the App Store in January 2026 after the tool failed to prevent the generation of sexualized deepfakes. The details were revealed in a letter sent by Apple to U.S. Senators, which was obtained by NBC News.

The conflict began earlier in 2026 when users discovered that the Grok chatbot would comply with requests to generate images that undressed people in photos, specifically targeting women and minors. This surge of nonconsensual sexual imagery led to intense pressure on Apple to remove both the Grok app and the X app from its platform.

App Store Compliance and Review Process

According to the letter, Apple determined that both X and Grok were in violation of its App Store guidelines. After receiving complaints and monitoring news coverage of the scandal, Apple contacted the development teams behind the apps and required them to create a plan to improve content moderation.

The remediation process involved multiple submissions and rejections. X submitted an update to the Grok app for review, but Apple rejected the submission because the changes didn’t go far enough.

Elon Musk’s company subsequently submitted revised versions of both the X and Grok apps. Apple’s review of these submissions yielded different results for the two products:

• Apple determined that X had substantially resolved its violations and accepted the submission.
• Apple found that the Grok app remained out of compliance and rejected the submission.

Following the second rejection, Apple notified the developer that additional changes were required to remedy the violation or the app would be removed from the App Store. After further engagement and additional changes by the developer, Apple determined that Grok had substantially improved and approved the latest submission.

Regulatory and Legislative Pressure

The situation drew the attention of the U.S. Government. Three Democratic senators—Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico—sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The senators urged both companies to enforce their terms of service to ban the generation of sexualized deepfakes. Senator Wyden specifically criticized the efficacy of the changes made by X, arguing that the company’s adjustments did not address the core issue of Grok flooding social media feeds with nonconsensual imagery.

All X’s changes do is make some of its users pay for the privilege of producing horrific images on the X app, while Musk profits from the abuse of children.

Sen. Ron Wyden in a statement to NBC News

Technical Implementation of Restrictions

In response to the controversy, X implemented changes to how the Grok reply bot operated on the social media platform. These changes included restricting image generation to paying premium subscribers and limiting the types of images the reply bot could create.

Despite these restrictions on the X social media feed, reports indicated that Grok continued to create sexualized deepfakes within the standalone Grok app and on the Grok website, as well as in the dedicated Grok tab on X.

The incident highlights the tension between AI developers and platform gatekeepers regarding content moderation for generative AI tools, particularly when those tools are capable of producing nonconsensual sexual content involving real people.