Three Democratic senators have called for the immediate suspension of Elon Musk’s X and Grok apps from the Apple and Google app stores, igniting a fierce debate over tech moderation, AI ethics, and the responsibilities of digital platforms. The senators’ action follows a surge of outrage over Grok—a generative artificial intelligence tool developed by Musk’s xAI—which has been used to create and distribute nonconsensual, sexualized images of real people, including women and minors, across the X social media platform and beyond.
In an open letter dated January 9, 2026, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico addressed Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, urging them to enforce their own app store policies.
They wrote, “Apple and Google must remove these apps from the application stores until X’s policy violations are addressed.” The senators cited the platforms’ terms of service, which explicitly prohibit apps that allow the distribution of sexualized images without consent or content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children.
For more than a week, users have prompted the official Grok reply chatbot to generate sexualized images of nonconsenting people, putting them in more revealing clothing such as swimsuits and underwear. “X users have used the app’s Grok AI tool to generate nonconsensual sexual imagery of real, private citizens at scale,” the senators wrote. “This trend has included Grok modifying images to depict women being sexually abused, humiliated, hurt, and even killed.”
“Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices. Indeed, not taking action would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones,” they said.
Friday morning’s move by X seems at least partly in response to sustained backlash against Grok’s production of sexual deepfakes, but Musk and X have not indicated that there will be a wider rollback of Grok’s capabilities on all platforms, including the downloadable Grok app, which remains in the Google and Apple app stores.
