Advocacy groups demand Apple and Google block X from app stores

X is awash with nonconsensual sexual deepfakes that blatantly violate Apple’s and Google’s policies, yet it and xAI’s Grok remain on both companies’ app stores. In open letters published Wednesday, a coalition of 28 advocacy groups, including women’s organizations and tech watchdogs, are demanding CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai grow spines and evict them.

“Grok is being used to create mass amounts of nonconsensual intimate images (NCII), including child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — content that is both a criminal offense and in direct violation of Apple’s App Review Guidelines. Because Grok is available on the Grok app and directly integrated into X, we call on Apple leadership to immediately remove access to both apps.”

The groups, which include women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, Women’s March, MoveOn, and Friends of the Earth, sent an almost-identical letter to Google. The organizations decry the “mass spree of ‘mass digitally undressing’ women and minors” on X and said civil society groups have been sounding the alarm about Grok’s potential for this kind of harm since it launched.

The letters, part of a push to “Get Grok Gone,” coincide with the launch of UltraViolet’s Reclaim the Domain campaign, a broader fight against the nonconsensual creation and sharing of intimate images.