Open Letter Signed by Coalition of 28 Organizations Demands Apple, Google Remove Grok AI and X from App Stores

For Immediate Release: January 14, 2025

28 organizations call on CEOs of Apple and Google to ban Grok from their stores for the chatbot’s role in generating sexualized pictures and videos of women and children

UltraViolet, a leading national women-led gender-justice organization that works to hold the tech and corporate sectors accountable, is announcing the release of two open letters to Apple and Google, signed by 28 civil society organizations, demanding that Apple and Google ban Grok AI and X from their respective app stores for the chatbot’s role in creating mass amounts of non-consensual intimate images (NCII) of women and children:

“As the pain and indignity of a relentless campaign of mass sexual abuse carried out via Grok AI on X echoes across the globe, the silence of Apple and Google is deafening,” said Jenna Sherman, Campaign Director at UltraViolet. “Until both Grok and X—the platform through which most Grok users access the chatbot—are taken down off their respective App Stores, Apple and Google will continue not just enabling the widespread sexual abuse of women and minors—but openly profiting from it.”

Civil society groups began raising the alarm around the dangers of potential misuses of Elon Musk’s Grok AI, including generating NCII, going back to the chatbot’s launch. Those warnings proved prescient in August 2025, when Musk’s company, xAI, launched what it called a “spicy” mode for the chatbot, launched without sufficient safeguards and allowing users to create pornographic images and videos by “declothing” real people online. A widespread campaign of “digital undressing” and sexual abuse has ensued since, spiking dramatically in recent weeks. While the majority of these AI-generated images target adult women, a number of them depict minors. Outrage over Grok has been swift, with advocacy groups like UltraViolet launching campaigns to take Grok down and Senate lawmakers passing yesterday a bill which would allow victims of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to sue for civil damages.

“The proliferation of non-consensual deepfakes has irreversibly altered the lives of women and children who’ve been completely stripped of their privacy, autonomy, and safety,” said Sherman. “This may be a game to Elon Musk—who instead of taking down Grok entirely until proper safeguards were implemented instead made AI image abuse a paid feature—but it’s deadly serious for the thousands of users actively being harmed.”

The scale of this wave of mass sexual abuse cannot be understated. According to an independent review from content analysis firm Copyleaks, Grok has been generating “roughly one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute,” each posted directly to X. Another exposee, published by deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh and covered by Bloomberg, found that 85% of Grok’s images, overall, are sexualized. These statistics paint a horrifying picture of an AI chatbot and social media app rapidly turning into a tool and platform for non-consensual sexual deepfakes—content that is content that is both a criminal offense and in direct violation of App Store policies for both Apple and Google.

The open letter targeting Apple and Google received coverage from Reuters in its release and represents the coalition’s commitment to building necessary AI guardrails to keep people safe and to hold tech companies accountable. Leaders from several of the 28 participating organizations spoke out in condemnation of inaction by the two major tech companies:

“What are Google and Apple waiting for? It’s no secret that Grok is being used to produce child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images of women,” said Brendan Bouffard, a Staff Attorney at Fairplay. “If Grok can’t be made safe, these companies must take action immediately to remove Grok from their app stores. And lawmakers must step in as quickly as possible to regulate AI and ensure that children are protected from this dangerous technology.”

“Deplatforming both Grok and X is an absolutely necessary step—each moment they don’t, everyone is at risk,” declared Ben Winters, the Director of AI and Privacy at Consumer Federation of America. “In just a few short years, X has gone from a place for trusted information sharing to a place for harassment and propaganda to now a merchant of criminal activity that actively endangers anyone who has ever had a photo of them taken”

“Grok’s leadership has repeatedly demonstrated that it will not only enable the sexualization of children for profit, it refuses to take any steps to stop or slow this abuse now that the problem has drawn wide-spread attention,” said Calli Schroeder, Senior Council and Director of the AI and Human Rights Program at Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “Where Grok has failed to act, Apple and Google must.”

“Creating nonconsensual deepfake intimate images is not free speech—it is technology-facilitated abuse,” Azaleea Carlea, Legal Director at The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund explained. “Survivors are forced to live with the trauma while tech platforms profit from the very tools that make this harm possible. We urge Apple to immediately remove Grok and send a clear message that no company should be allowed to profit from people’s trauma and abuse. We also call on Congress to swiftly pass the DEFIANCE Act, which would give survivors a path to justice by allowing them to hold the creators of these abusive images accountable for the damage they inflict. It is long past time for our leaders to stand with survivors—not protect or empower their abusers.”

“Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai can no longer stick their heads in the sand as tens of thousands of women and children become targets of sexual abuse through apps that are violating their own companies’ stated policies,” said Sherman. “We demand that Apple and Google leadership urgently remove Grok and X from the App Store to prevent further abuse and criminal activity. The physical and mental well-being of every woman and child depend on it.”

Ultraviolet, which worked to stop child abuse on online platforms like Roblox and campaigned against the Defense Department’s adoption of Grok, released the open letter to Apple and Google as part of their “Get Grok Gone” accountability campaign, which itself is part of a broader effort to dismantle the NCII ecosystem, known as “Reclaim the Domain”.

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