Official White House Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Apple could change the trajectory of online discourse overnight. They could change THE WORLD overnight. They could remove X from the App Store tomorrow and force Elon Musk to actually moderate his platform.
I’m not the only one who thinks this:
- The Verge: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards
- Wired: Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores?
- Daring Fireball: Grok X App Stores
Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, has been generating child sexual abuse material. Not in some dark corner of the internet, but on X (the everything platform) itself. On December 28, 2025, Grok generated and posted sexualized images of girls estimated to be 12-16 years old. The AI was allowed to “apologize for it” in a post, admitting it “violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on CSAM.” It shouldn’t be allowed to be the PR “face” of this, it is not a person, and it is not ultimately responsible for the eyeballs the view it.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Reuters reported Grok was generating “sexualized images of women and minors” at a rate of about 6,700 per hour. Regulators in the UK, EU, Australia, India, and Malaysia have all launched investigations.
Apple? CRICKETS. 🦗
If any other app were generating child sexual abuse material at industrial scale, Apple would have removed it weeks ago. They’ve kicked apps for far less. Remember what happened to Tumblr? But X gets special treatment because Musk has the ear of the administration, and Cook has already demonstrated he’ll bend the knee for access and favorable deals or at the very least to avoid ire.
Apple’s App Store guidelines explicitly prohibit “content that depicts minors in a sexual manner” and require apps to have “robust” content moderation. X fails both tests spectacularly. Musk dissolved Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, fired most of the engineers working on content moderation, and introduced an AI tool that generates CSAM.
When asked for comment, xAI’s auto-reply was “Legacy Media Lies.” When shown some of the generated images, Musk reportedly responded with laugh-cry emojis. This is who Apple is protecting. X should be removed from the App Store immediately.
The company that markets itself on privacy and safety, that runs feel-good ads about protecting children, is hosting an app that generates child sexual abuse material and refuses to stop. They have the power to end this tomorrow. Every day they don’t is a choice that Tim Cook is making.