Apple and Google ordered by San Francisco attorney to take action against 'nudify' apps
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu has issued cease-and-desist letters to both Apple and Google, directing them to take action against 13 "nudify" applications listed on the App Store and Google Play. The apps in question use generative AI models to synthetically remove clothing from photos of real individuals - producing non-consensual intimate imagery, commonly referred to as NCII. The letters demand that the companies remove the apps from their storefronts and take steps to prevent similar tools from appearing in the future.
Nudify apps have proliferated alongside advances in image generation technology, and they have been a persistent concern for legislators, platform operators, and advocacy groups. The underlying models are typically trained on large datasets of real images and can produce convincing results from a single photograph. Victims are often women and minors, and the imagery is frequently used for harassment or extortion.
Both Apple and Google maintain developer policies that prohibit apps facilitating the creation of sexualized imagery of real people without consent, but enforcement has been inconsistent. Critics have argued that the app review processes at both companies have allowed tools with clearly harmful use cases to slip through, sometimes by framing their functionality ambiguously in store listings. The city attorney's action essentially puts both platforms on notice that local authorities are willing to pursue legal pressure where internal moderation has fallen short.
This development fits into a broader pattern of regulatory and legal attention on generative AI misuse. The federal DEFIANCE Act, signed into law in 2024, created a civil right of action for victims of AI-generated NCII, and several states have passed or are considering their own criminal statutes. A formal demand from a city attorney does not carry the same weight as legislation, but it signals that platform accountability for AI-enabled harm is becoming an active front for legal authorities at multiple levels of government.
