Apple forced X and Grok apps to make changes

Apple required changes to X and Grok apps

Developers had to alter the applications

Apple has told US senators how it worked behind the scenes to address the surge in sexualised deepfakes created by Grok earlier this year.

Earlier this year, Apple came under intense pressure to remove the Grok and X apps from the App Store after users found that the chatbot readily complied with requests to remove people’s clothes in photographs, particularly women, including underage girls.

Apple largely remained silent during the controversy. However, NBC News reports that, behind the scenes, the company “found that X and Grok were violating its rules” and “privately threatened to remove” Grok from the App Store.

After receiving complaints and reviewing news coverage of the scandal, Apple “contacted the teams behind the X and Grok apps”. It required the “app developers to devise a plan to improve content moderation”.

Apple’s review of the Grok submission

X subsequently submitted an updated version of the Grok app for review, but Apple rejected it because the “changes were insufficient”. Elon Musk’s company then submitted revised versions of the X and Grok apps, although only one was approved.

Apple’s letter stated: “Apple reviewed the following submissions made by the developers and determined that X had substantially remedied the violations, but the Grok app still did not meet the requirements. As a result, we rejected Grok’s submission and informed the developer that further changes were needed to remedy the violation, otherwise the app could be removed from the App Store. Following further engagement and changes made by the Grok developer, we determined that Grok had improved substantially and therefore approved its latest submission.”

Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI. Launched in late 2023, it was integrated into the X (Twitter) social network and presented as a wittier, less “politically correct” alternative to ChatGPT.

Restrictions and international action against Grok

At the start of the year, Elon Musk’s xAI introduced limits on the ability to edit photographs of real people using the Grok chatbot. The move followed a scandal involving the chatbot’s generation of intimate deepfake images. Malaysia and Indonesia had previously blocked Grok from operating within their territories.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer previously said that authorities must “consider all options” at this point, including a potential ban on the X platform. The UK has also held discussions with Canada and Australia about a possible ban on Elon Musk’s social network.