Apple nearly banned Grok app over deepfake row; xAI forced to fix violations

xAI’s Grok was close to getting banned from Apple’s App Store after its controversy over sexually explicit deepfakes generated by the chatbot. According to an NBC report, Apple found X and Grok AI chatbot violating App Store guidelines, and also threatened the company to take down the Grok app from its App Store listing.

However, all of this happened behind the scenes, and Apple did not issue a public statement regarding the violation of its App Store guidelines by the AI chatbot. The company reportedly reached out to the teams behind X and Grok after complaints and media reports about the controversy.

Apple asked the teams to build a clear plan to control and moderate harmful content on the app. While xAI submitted an updated proposal, Apple rejected it, stating that the content moderation improvements did not go far enough. X again submitted a revised proposal, but only one of them was approved.

The report quoted Apple’s letter to US senators saying, “Apple reviewed the next submissions made by the developers and determined that X had substantially resolved its violations, but the Grok app remained out of compliance. As a result, we rejected the Grok submission and notified the developer that additional changes to remedy the violation would be required, or the app could be removed from the App Store.”

“Following further engagement and changes by the Grok developer, we determined that Grok had substantially improved and therefore approved its latest submission,” the letter added.

The aftermath of the Grok deepfake controversy drove attention from three U.S. senators: Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Edward Markey urged Apple and Google to remove the X app and the Grok chatbot from their app stores. 

In addition, the Indian government also issued a strict notice to X, which led to the removal of 3,500 posts, and the platform also blocked 600 accounts. However, the government was still not satisfied with X’s earlier response to a notice. Similar actions were reported from the UK, Malaysia and Indonesia, where X faced a temporary ban.

Now, a separate NBC report states that the issues persist in the Grok chatbot, and that it found dozens of AI-generated sexualized images of women in X. 

Sharing the screenshot of the report, X safety account issued a statement on the platform saying, “We strictly prohibit users from generating non-consensual explicit deepfakes and from using our tools to undress real people. xAI has extensive safeguards in place to prevent such misuse, such as continuous monitoring of public usage, analysis of evasion attempts in real time, frequent model updates, prompt filters, and additional safeguards.”