Apple has updated its App Store Review Guidelines to more explicitly ban apps that generate nonconsensual intimate imagery, including so-called “nudify” apps that use AI tools.
The changes, announced October 16, 2026, require developers to proactively prevent and remove such content. They follow heavy criticism of Apple after X users used Grok earlier this year to make nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes, including of minors, The Verge reported.
Apps that host user-generated content were already required to filter objectionable material, give users a way to report offensive content and let them block abusive accounts. Under the revised guideline 1.2, those content-moderation requirements now explicitly cover nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated using AI tools.
Developers who fail to put adequate safeguards in place, or don’t fix violations after notice, risk violating the Developer Code of Conduct and being removed from the App Store. Apple said pornographic material has long been prohibited, including apps that create sexually explicit images of real people without their consent.
Apple also went after bait-and-switch apps. New guideline 2.5.19 clarifies a longstanding ban on apps that misrepresent what they do during App Review and then change after approval, for example by adding features such as nudification. Apps caught doing this can be removed from the App Store and from the Apple Developer Program.
The update follows a string of earlier problems. In January 2026, the Tech Transparency Project found 48 nudify apps on the App Store, and Apple removed 28 of them, two of which were later restored, according to CNBC, as cited in a Verge report.
Protesters at Apple’s WWDC event in June 2026 called on the company to “remove Grok, X, and all nudify technology from the App Store.” In July, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu demanded that Apple and Google remove 13 nudify apps. An Apple spokesperson told The Verge the company had removed three of them and was terminating their developer accounts. The spokesperson said Apple had “proactively rejected many of these apps and removed many others, including when users have flagged them via our reporting tools.”
Apple did not pull X or Grok from the App Store, though it told senators it had threatened to remove Grok.
Apple said the October 16 updates “strengthen and extend the existing App Store protections.” The revised guidelines also spell out that apps found to facilitate human trafficking or the exploitation of children will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution. Translations of the updated guidelines will be available on Apple’s developer website within one month.