Artificial intelligence startup Ex-Human has officially filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of "arbitrary enforcement" of the App Store rules, leading to the removal of its AI social applications Botify AI and Photify AI, and the withholding of approximately $500,000 in revenue.
Previously, an investigation alleged that the chatbots hosted by Botify AI bypassed the review mechanism to provide explicit sexual content involving minors and allowed users to generate images of real people without clothes. In response, Ex-Human refuted in the lawsuit that the takedown notice only vaguely mentioned "dishonest or fraudulent behavior" without providing concrete evidence, and accused Apple of aiming to clear the competitive landscape for its own Image Playground by targeting third-party AI apps.
Although Ex-Human emphasized that its system's user retention has surpassed mainstream products like ChatGPT and that it has important partners such as Grindr, industry opinions generally question the logic behind the claim of "unfair competition," as there are significant differences between its product positioning and Apple's native image tools.
The core issue of this case lies in the boundaries of Apple's regulatory authority over generative AI: although Apple allows social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to exist with adult content under the premise of having review mechanisms, Ex-Human's violations involve illegal content distribution.
Notably, Ex-Human is backed by top-tier capital such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In the current context of complex negotiations among Silicon Valley tech giants, emerging AI forces, and regulatory authorities, this case not only concerns the division of interests between developers and platform providers but also signals that compliance reviews for AI applications are becoming a critical battlefield for the survival of startups.
