Apple tightens App Store rules on AI nudify apps

Apple has rewritten parts of its App Store rulebook to go after apps that turn ordinary photos into sexually explicit images. In a developer news post on October 16, the company said its updated App Review Guidelines now explicitly cover nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated with AI, and put the burden on developers to stop it.

What changes for apps with user content

Pornography has long been banned from the App Store, and Apple says that already included "nudification" apps that create explicit images of real people without consent. The new wording in guideline 1.2 goes further. It names social media, user-generated content platforms and AI content creation apps, and says such apps must:

• filter objectionable material before it is posted;
• let users report offensive content and respond in a timely way;
• let users block abusive accounts;
• publish contact information so people can reach the developer.

Apple says this kind of imagery is now content apps must proactively prevent and remove. Developers who fail to put adequate safeguards in place, or do not fix problems after Apple notifies them, may be treated as violating the Developer Code of Conduct. Apple can pull the app until things improve, and "egregious or repeated" cases can lead to immediate removal from both the App Store and the Apple Developer Program.

A new rule against bait-and-switch apps

The second change targets apps that look harmless during review and switch on harmful features afterwards. New guideline 2.5.19 spells out Apple's long-standing ban on hidden, dormant or undocumented features, which used to sit under guideline 2.3.1. Engadget notes that if Apple finds an app misrepresented its purpose and actually offers nudification, both the app and its developer can be removed.

Other updates in the same revision

Apple also added guideline 2.3.14 on creative assets, simplified a payments rule about music streaming links, and clarified in Section 5 that apps facilitating human trafficking or child exploitation will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution. Translations of the new guidelines are due within a month.

For users, the change will not show up as a new setting, but it raises the bar for any app that lets people upload or generate images. Fake and copycat apps remain a problem on every store, as the recent fake WhatsApp listing on Google Play showed. On the detection side, Google's SynthID watermarking is one of the tools being built to flag AI-generated images.