Apple Bans AI Nudify Apps, the FAA Rules on Musk's Flying Car, and Carriers Charge $10 for a Software Feature

Apple moved to close a gap in its App Store policies by explicitly targeting AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery — so-called nudify applications that had occupied a gray zone because existing rules addressed explicit content without specifically accounting for AI-generated imagery as a distinct category. The update aligns Apple's platform rules with laws in several states, including California and Texas, that now specifically criminalize such imagery, reducing the company's legal exposure. The enforcement challenge remains: Apple's store contains approximately 1.8 million apps, and new variants of prohibited applications can look meaningfully different from the policy language written to catch them.

The Federal Aviation Administration ruled this week that Tesla's flying Roadster — a production car fitted with rocket thrusters designed to perform controlled jumps and potentially short-distance flight — does not meet the federal definition of an aircraft. The FAA's statutory definition requires a vehicle to be used for the purpose of flight in air; the Roadster's ballistic-hop design appears to fall outside that framework, placing it in a regulatory no-man's land between FAA jurisdiction and the less demanding standards of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The ruling is not necessarily final: if the vehicle evolves to demonstrate sustained controlled flight, the FAA's analysis may change. Sam Altman publicly praised the project, a gesture of rare collegial détente between two figures whose legal disputes over OpenAI's structure were public through 2025.

Verizon announced it will charge $10 a month for access to iPhone Handoff under iOS 27 — a feature that allows a single phone number to operate across two iPhones. T-Mobile is pricing the same capability at $5. The feature is a software function built by Apple; carriers are monetizing their network routing for it at margins that far exceed their underlying costs. The pricing differential illustrates the practical limits of competition in a market where three carriers divide hundreds of millions of subscribers facing high switching costs. Verizon charging double T-Mobile's price for an identical feature reflects each company's assessment of how price-sensitive its own customer base is — not the result of dramatically different infrastructure costs.

The carrier pricing situation illuminates a broader point about antitrust law that often surfaces in discussions of platform and telecom markets. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 prohibits contracts or combinations that restrain trade, and monopolization achieved through exclusionary conduct — not mere size or pricing power. Courts have consistently held that having a large market share is not itself a violation; what matters is whether a company has used anti-competitive behavior to acquire or maintain that position. Verizon charging more than T-Mobile for the same feature is not automatically an antitrust violation — it is, potentially, simply pricing. The distinction matters enormously, and critics of large technology and telecom companies frequently discover how narrow antitrust law's actual scope is when cases reach the courts.