Apple threatened to remove Grok from the App Store in January over non-consensual deepfakes. It rejected xAI’s first fix.

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Apple privately threatened to remove xAI's Grok chatbot from the App Store in January 2026 after the app was used to generate non-consensual sexualized deepfakes of real people, including minors. A letter sent to US senators and obtained by NBC News reveals Apple rejected xAI's first remediation attempt as insufficient, warned the app could be pulled, and only approved a later submission after further changes. xAI's fixes included restricting image editing to paid subscribers, limiting edits of real people, and geoblocking image generation in some regions — though NBC News reported some restrictions could still be bypassed via modified prompts.

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