{"id":22227,"date":"2026-01-09T18:07:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T16:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/democratic-us-senators-demand-apple-google-take-x-grok-off-app-stores-over-sexual-images\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:33:17","slug":"democratic-us-senators-demand-apple-google-take-x-grok-off-app-stores-over-sexual-images","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/democratic-us-senators-demand-apple-google-take-x-grok-off-app-stores-over-sexual-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic US senators demand Apple, Google take X, Grok off app stores over sexual images"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">In a letter published Friday, s<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">enators<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, and Edward Markey of Massachusetts <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">said<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Google and Apple &#8220;must remove these apps from the app stores until X\u2019s policy violations are addressed.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been under fire from officials around the world since last week, when Grok began flooding the site with AI-generated nonconsensual images of women and children wearing revealing bikinis, see-through underwear, or in degrading, violent, or sexualized poses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The senators&#8217; letter, first reported by <\/span><em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">NBC News<\/span><\/em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, noted that Google has terms of service that bar app makers from &#8220;creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children,&#8221; and that Apple has terms of service that bar &#8220;sexual or pornographic material.&#8221; The senators noted that, in the past, both tech giants have moved swiftly to kick offending apps off their platforms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">&#8220;Turning a blind eye to X\u2019s egregious behaviour would make a mockery of your moderation practices,&#8221; the letter said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Google and Apple did not immediately return messages seeking comment. X referred Reuters to a January 2 post in which it said the site takes action &#8220;against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">X&#8217;s parent company <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">xAI<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> did not answer specific questions about the letter or Grok&#8217;s explicit output, sending only its generic response that cited unspecified &#8220;Legacy Media Lies.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Musk has responded with laugh-cry emojis to AI-altered photographs of prominent people in bikinis and has posted several times a day about X&#8217;s popularity. At one point, Musk blamed users for unlawful content generated by his chatbot, saying: &#8220;Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22228,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-22227","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Three Democratic United States (US) senators are calling on Apple and Alphabet's Google to remove X and its built-in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok from their app stores, citing the spread of nonconsensual sexual images of women and minors on the platform.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Three Democratic United States (US) senators are calling on Apple and Alphabet's Google to remove X and its built-in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok from their app stores, citing the spread of nonconsensual sexual images of women and minors on the platform.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25599,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22227\/revisions\/25599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}