Apple reportedly threatened to yank Elon Musk\u2019s Grok from its App Store over complaints the AI app wasn\u2019t doing enough to stop users from creating nude or overly sexualized deepfakes \u2014 a potentially major blow as Grok came under international scrutiny for the content it was being used to create.<\/p>\n
The threat, which surfaced in a recently revealed missive to US senators, came after Apple determined that Grok \u2014 along with Musk\u2019s social media site X \u2014 were in violation of Apple rules barring overtly sexual material.<\/p>\n
Apple took the drastic step after asking X and Grok to clamp down on functions that allowed users to create sexualized deepfakes, according to a Jan. 30 letter cited by NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n Apple privately threatened to remove Elon Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence app, Grok, from its App Store in January. AP<\/p>\n Apple had determined Grok\u2019s efforts to address the problem \u2014 which included the use of AI to undress images of people with their consent \u2014 hadn\u2019t gone far enough, Apple reportedly wrote Democratic Sens. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n of New Mexico, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon.<\/p>\n X had announced a crackdown<\/a> on using AI for undressing images on Jan. 14, saying that the restriction \u201capplies to all users, including paid subscribers.\u201d <\/p>\n And Apple reportedly said it asked X and Grok to come up with a plan to improve content moderation, though that was found to be lacking.<\/p>\n \u201cApple \u2026 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,\u201d Apple wrote the senators.<\/p>\n Following Apple\u2019s threat, Grok submitted new code to the tech giant, according to NBC News \u2014 apparently resolving the dispute for now.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing further engagement and changes by the Grok developer, we determined that Grok had substantially improved and therefore approved its latest submission,\u201d Apple wrote the senators.\u00a0<\/p>\n The letter, signed by Apple\u2019s senior director of government affairs Timothy Powderly, suggests that Grok came closer than previously known to losing access to the more than 2 billion devices connected to Apple\u2019s software marketplace.<\/p>\n The missive came in the wake of public outrage over sexualized AI images made by Grok and posted on X, with French<\/a>, UK <\/a>and European Union authorities launching probes into X. Musk characterized the investigations as attempts at censorship.<\/p>\n Musk owns social media site X and AI app Grok. Getty Images<\/p>\n Prior to that, X and xAI, which runs Grok, sued Apple in August on allegations it had \u201cdragged out\u201d its review process for Grok updates, according to NBC News \u2014 an allegation Apple denied.<\/p>\n The threat from Apple reportedly came after the Democratic trio asked it and Google to remove X and Grok from the marketplaces.<\/p>\n Wyden told NBC News he was \u201cdisappointed that Google didn\u2019t treat this matter with the same seriousness as Apple, given the horrific nature of the images these apps have produced.\u201d <\/p>\n It \u201cremains shocking that Trump\u2019s Justice Department took no action to hold X accountable for producing and distributing vast amounts of vile material,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Apple issued the warning during backlash against Grok and X\u2019s rolled out sexualization tools which allowed users to sexualize people online without their consent using AI. Getty Images<\/p>\n It\u2019s not known whether Google made a threat similar to Apple\u2019s, NBC noted. Google reportedly told the senators it \u201cimmediately engaged\u201d with Musk\u2019s teams \u201cto underscore the importance of policy adherence and to receive assurances that they were committed to addressing the promotion of harmful content.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery of real, private citizens \u2013 including children \u2013 by any AI tool is sickening and must be properly addressed. Companies like Apple and Google must not turn a blind eye to these practices,\u201d Luj\u00e1n told The Post in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile my calls to address these heinous practices were acknowledged, reporting that X\u2019s Grok AI is still able to generate similar imagery is disturbing and I will continue to push to eliminate the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery.\u201d<\/p>\n The Post has sought comment from Apple, Google, X, Grok, Markey and Wyden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple reportedly threatened to yank Elon Musk\u2019s Grok from its App Store over complaints the AI app wasn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[319,25,309,140,6364,781,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-23440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-xai","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-grok","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}