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 X.
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Advocacy groups and lawmakers demanded Apple and Google remove both the X and Grok apps from their stores. Apple’s letter, sent on 30 January to senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Edward Markey, confirms that the company reviewed xAI’s submissions and found both X and Grok in violation of its App Store guidelines, which prohibit “offensive, insensitive, upsetting” content.
Apple’s response, per the letter, was to contact the teams behind both apps and demand a content moderation plan. xAI submitted an update, which Apple rejected, telling the developer the “changes didn’t go far enough.”
Apple then reviewed revised submissions from both X and Grok: it determined that X had substantially resolved its violations, but Grok remained out of compliance.
Apple rejected the Grok submission and warned that additional changes were required “or the app could be removed from the App Store.” Following further engagement, Apple eventually approved a later Grok submission, concluding it had substantially improved.
The disclosure explains a series of seemingly inconsistent moderation changes xAI announced at the height of the controversy in January, including restricting image editing to paid subscribers, limiting the ability to edit images of real people, and geoblocking image generation in certain jurisdictions.
NBC News reported that some of these restrictions could still be bypassed through modified prompts, suggesting that while the problem was reduced, it was not fully resolved.
xAI told NBC News the company “strictly prohibits users from generating non-consensual explicit deepfakes and from using our tools to undress real people.”
