Overview
- Apple updated its App Review Guidelines on Friday to explicitly require developers to prevent and remove AI‑generated nonconsensual intimate imagery and to treat AI creation tools as subject to moderation.
- The company added guideline 2.5.19 to forbid hidden, dormant, or undocumented features and to call out code obfuscation as a tactic that can get an app removed and a developer account terminated.
- Apple strengthened Section 5 of the rules to say apps that facilitate human trafficking or child exploitation will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution.
- The move formalizes actions taken after earlier reporting and local enforcement — including investigations that found dozens of 'nudify' apps, San Francisco removal orders, hidden gambling behavior in some apps, and warnings to xAI over Grok — and makes remediation a condition of staying listed.
- Users targeted by deepfakes gain clearer protections while developers must now build and document safeguards or face removal, and regulators and researchers will likely watch how strictly Apple enforces the new rules and whether bad actors shift tactics or platforms.