Cannot grant access to App without granting access to Semantic Model

I am trying to grant users access to an App without granting them access to the workspace or the semantic model. The report is using a live connection to a Power BI dataset, and I have followed all the instructions here and users are still unable to access the App unless they are granted permissions on the underlying Semantic model. Is it necessary to add users to the semantic model? Our organization is just beginning to leverage apps, and the impression was that the app could be used to distribute information without having access to the underlying data.