Apple has revised its App Store rules in an effort to shut out 'nudify' apps — AI tools built to generate non-consensual intimate imagery from ordinary photos — according to a report from The Verge.
The category has become one of the clearest consumer-facing harms of generative AI. Such tools are cheap to build, easy to distribute through app stores, and overwhelmingly used against women and girls. Apple's updated guidelines are meant to give the company firmer grounds to reject or remove them before they reach users.
Pressure had been building. This July, San Francisco's city attorney ordered Apple and Google to remove thirteen nudify apps from their stores. The new rules shift Apple from a reactive posture — chasing individual apps after complaints — to a policy it can apply at review time.
The move also reflects a broader shift in platform policy. App stores are becoming de facto regulators of AI-generated content, deciding at scale what models may produce and what users may share. That role carries real weight: a rejection at review amounts to a global distribution block.
Whether updated rules change outcomes depends on enforcement. Advocates for victims have long argued that remove-on-complaint is too slow when an image can be generated in seconds and spread in minutes. The test for Apple's new stance is how quickly it acts — and whether lookalike tools migrating between platforms are caught too.
