Grok has been climbing Apple and Google’s app store rankings amid calls to remove it for sexualized images
Critics have pointed out that Apple and Google have removed other apps for less.
As uproar has grown around sexualized deepfakes of women and children through Grok’s image generation tools, so has the xAI chatbot’s popularity.
The issue became popularized in late December, as users on X tagged Grok to make it digitally undress people. More recently, as Grok’s outsized volume of deepfakes has become more heavily publicized — social media and deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh found that 85% of Grok’s images are sexualized and its posts dwarf other deepfake sites — people have been calling for action.
Europe and India have announced probes over the images. The UK’s prime minister has vowed to take action, and three Democratic US senators have asked Apple and Google to remove X and Grok from their app stores, NBC reports.
In response to the outrage, Grok has restricted its image generation tool on X to paid users but has left the Grok stand-alone app and website largely untouched.
At the same time, Grok has been climbing the Apple and Google app store rankings. Grok is currently No. 4 in the iOS App Store, having moved up from 44th the day after Christmas. On the Google Play Store, it’s now ranked No. 13 overall, up from 62.
Many social media users have pointed out that back in 2018, Apple removed Tumblr from its store for sexualized images of children. In the AI era, Google and Apple have removed a number of smaller apps for offering sexually exploitative content generation, but Grok and X remain.
Last year, xAI CEO Elon Musk filed a lawsuit alleging that Apple favored its partner OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the App Store.
