Apple tightens App Review rules on AI intimate imagery and bait-and-switch apps

Apple published revised App Review Guidelines on October 16, 2026. The main changes target apps that let users create or share nonconsensual intimate imagery, including images made with AI tools, and apps that change what they do after they pass review.

What changed

Guideline	Change
1.2	Content moderation now explicitly covers nonconsensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated imagery. Apps must proactively prevent and remove it.
2.3.14	New guideline covering creative assets.
2.5.19	New guideline on hidden, dormant or undocumented features, formerly covered in 2.3.1.
3.1.1(a)	The Music Streaming Services Entitlements bullet is folded into the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlements bullet. Apple clarified that links may go to a permitted destination.
5	Apps that facilitate human trafficking or the exploitation of children will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution.

Apple also added links to more documentation in the “Before You Submit” and “After You Submit” sections.

What the penalties are

• 1.2: developers who don’t put adequate safeguards in place, or don’t fix violations after notice, risk breaking the Developer Code of Conduct and being removed from the App Store.
• 2.5.19: apps that misrepresent what they do during review, then add features or functions after approval that weren’t in the submitted version, face removal from the App Store and from the Apple Developer Program.
• Section 5: removal from the App Store and a block on alternative distribution.

Apple’s post adds that it stopped over 150,000 apps with safety issues from reaching customers last year and terminated over 193,000 developer accounts for fraud and abuse.

Who is affected

Any app with user-generated content, image generation or AI image editing, and any developer whose app gains features after approval that weren’t in the reviewed version. Apple’s post repeats that apps with user-generated content must filter objectionable material, offer a way to report it and let users block abusive accounts.

What to do

Before your next submission, check your filtering, reporting and blocking tools against guideline 1.2. Make sure the build you send to App Review includes every feature you plan to switch on later. Apple says translations of the updated guidelines will follow within one month.