Apple has tightened its App Store rules against so-called 'nudify' apps, updating its App Review Guidelines to require developers whose apps host user-generated or AI-created content to proactively prevent and remove nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated by artificial intelligence.
Sexually explicit content was already banned on the App Store. The change, in Guideline 1.2, adds a written duty on developers, with removal from the store for those who lack adequate safeguards or who fail to remedy violations after being notified.
A second new rule, Guideline 2.5.19, bars hidden, dormant or undocumented features. Hiding a capability through code obfuscation — for example, a 'nudification' feature that only appears after an app has passed review — is now grounds not just for removal of the app but for termination from the Apple Developer Program, a bait-and-switch penalty with real teeth for developers.
Apple also extended its existing ban on apps facilitating human trafficking or child exploitation to alternative app distribution, closing a gap as third-party marketplaces grow in some regions.
The Verge notes the change follows criticism after users of xAI's Grok on X created nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes, including of minors, earlier this year; Apple did not remove X or Grok, though it had threatened to, and in July a San Francisco city attorney ordered Apple to remove 13 'nudify' apps. The open question now is enforcement, since Apple has not said how the duty applies to general-purpose image generators and face-swapping apps.
