Apple updated its App Review Guidelines on Friday to explicitly require apps to prevent and remove nonconsensual intimate imagery, including images produced with AI tools. Developers whose safeguards fall short, or who leave violations unresolved after receiving notice, risk removal from the App Store under its conduct rules. The changes also address apps that conceal their actual capabilities until they have passed review.
The moderation change appears in guideline 1.2 and makes developers responsible for proactively addressing this imagery on their platforms. Apple says inadequate protections or a failure to correct violations can breach the Developer Code of Conduct. Existing obligations for apps carrying content from users include screening objectionable material, providing reporting tools for offensive posts and allowing people to block accounts that abuse them.
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The explicit treatment of nonconsensual imagery extends protections that Apple says already barred pornography and apps that produce nude or sexually explicit images. Those restrictions include apps that turn images of actual people into explicit material without consent. The change therefore adds a specific moderation obligation for platforms alongside the existing prohibition on apps that generate such material.
Guideline 2.5.19 addresses developers who disguise an app’s purpose during review and change its behavior after approval. Apple identifies the addition of capabilities absent from the submitted version as an example of that conduct. An app caught using this tactic can be removed from the store, and its developer can lose membership in the Apple Developer Program. Apple says its existing rules already prohibited concealed or undocumented capabilities, including explicit-image generation revealed only after approval.
Apple also revised Section 5 to specify that apps carrying material involving human trafficking or child exploitation, including child sexual abuse material, will be removed and barred from alternative distribution. The company says facilitating trafficking or exploiting children was already prohibited. It says it removes apps when it discovers that content.
Apple says it stopped more than 150,000 apps over safety problems last year and closed more than 193,000 developer accounts over fraud and abuse. The company attributes violations in some cases to organized fraud efforts that hide harmful content until approval. Apple says it is adapting its detection tools and review resources as those concealment tactics change.
