Apple tightens App Store rules against AI 'nudify' apps and bait-and-switch apps

Apple on Friday, October 16, published a revised version of its App Review Guidelines, the rules every app must follow to get onto the iPhone and iPad App Store. The changes target two problems: "nudification" apps, which use AI to create sexual images of real people without their consent, and apps that present one face to App Review and change their behavior once approved.

What changes

• Guideline 1.2 (user-generated content): moderation duties now explicitly name nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery made with AI tools. Apps must prevent and remove it; developers who fail to put adequate safeguards in place, or don't fix violations after notice, may be found in breach of the Developer Code of Conduct and removed.
• Guideline 2.5.19 (new): bans hidden, dormant or undocumented features, such as apps that pass review as one thing and become another. Apple names code obfuscation as an example and warns of app removal and expulsion from the Developer Program. The ban already existed under 2.3.1 but is now spelled out.
• Section 5 (legal): apps that facilitate human trafficking or child exploitation will be removed and also blocked from alternative distribution outside the App Store.
• There is also a new rule on creative assets (2.3.14) and a wording change on external purchase links (3.1.1(a)).

According to Apple, last year the App Store stopped more than 150,000 apps with safety issues from reaching customers and terminated more than 193,000 developer accounts for fraud and abuse. The company says some violations come from coordinated operations that only switch on harmful content after approval. Translations of the new guidelines are due within a month.

The context

The disguised-app trick is not hypothetical. In July, a 9to5Mac investigation found dozens of apps sold as simple games or utilities that, when opened from a Brazilian IP address, revealed hidden betting platforms, many of them available to children. Apple did not tie the update to specific cases, but the new 2.5.19 rule describes exactly that behavior.

Nudify apps have also been a running controversy: the Tech Transparency Project flagged dozens on the App Store in January, and xAI's Grok chatbot was used to generate sexualized images without consent, prompting calls to pull X and Grok from the store. Users don't need to do anything, but reporting any app that changes its function or exposes abusive content, through the app itself or the App Store, remains the best way to flag it.