The Nudify Crisis: When AI, App Stores, and Accountability Collide

San Francisco’s attorney general, David Chiu, has sent cease and desist letters demanding that Apple and Google remove 13 so called nudification apps from their app stores. These apps make it trivially easy to transform ordinary photos of real people into explicit images. They allow bad actors to remove clothing, change a person’s features, place them in sexualized positions, and swap victims’ faces onto other people’s naked bodies.

Chiu’s letter warned that app stores were violating California’s laws that prohibit supporting services that create deepfake pornography. His office estimated that Apple and Google have likely made millions of dollars in fees by ignoring the harmful apps rather than taking stronger actions or developing better detection to avoid profiting off a public nuisance.

The Human Cost

Talking to Wired, Chiu said his office was absolutely horrified by how ubiquitous the nudifying technology has become. It is victimizing mostly women and children at an alarming scale as more tools become available.

“These images are used to bully, humiliate, and threaten women and girls,” Chiu told Wired. “This industry has a horrific impact on one’s reputation, mental health, loss of autonomy. There have been victims who’ve been suicidal.”

One app had more than a million downloads and advertised features to sexualize images of women or make free and uncensored videos. The scale of the problem is staggering, and the human toll is immeasurable.

The App Store Response

In a statement to Ars Technica, Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said the five apps that Chiu flagged were suspended from the Google Play store for violating policies against harmful content. Google Play does not allow apps that contain sexual content, and the company says it continually takes proactive steps to detect and remove apps with harmful content. When violations are reported, Google investigates and takes swift action, which in the case of these apps has included suspending hundreds of violating apps and restricting related search terms like “nudify” on their store.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Although Apple has removed some apps flagged by researchers, the iPhone maker has otherwise remained notably silent amid calls to police nudification apps more aggressively in its App Store.

The Detection Challenge

App stores’ detection abilities matter, as researchers have recently warned that some harmful apps have gotten better at avoiding app store removals by only promoting face swapping features while hiding nudifying capabilities. In a May preprint paper, researchers identified 420 apps touted as generic face swapping tools and tested 155 to see if they could be used to sexualize images. In 70 percent of apps tested, nudification was possible.

This represents a cat and mouse game. Developers of harmful apps are becoming more sophisticated in concealing their true functionality. They know that app stores are looking for explicit content, so they hide the nudification features behind seemingly benign face swapping tools. The detection systems are struggling to keep up.

The Grok Elephant in the Room

There is also the Grok issue to consider. This week, xAI filed a lawsuit confirming that it found instances of Grok generated child sexual abuse materials and other nonconsensual intimate imagery targeting adults. To prevent the Grok misuse, xAI sued the user allegedly responsible for prompting Grok to generate the illegal content. But the question remains whether xAI is liable for the outputs.

Ever since the Grok scandal erupted, app stores have faced questions on whether xAI’s chatbot is violating app store policies against harmful content. Back in April, Apple told Senators that it had privately threatened to remove Grok, but the xAI app remains in the app store today.

So long as it is possible to use Grok to generate illegal content, app stores will likely continue to face pressure to take action to prevent harmful outputs. This is exactly what Chiu said that app stores should be doing with all apps allowing nudification if they want to comply with California deepfake laws.

Although Google’s spokesperson said that Google continuously tests generative AI apps to make sure they have safeguards preventing nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material creation, the spokesperson did not respond to requests to comment on whether the way that Grok performs today is an exception to Google’s policy.

In his letters to app stores, Chiu did not request Grok removals, but it is clear he is hoping that his demands will help broadly tighten up enforcement in both app stores, starting with removing the apps that his office flagged.

The Legal and Moral Questions

This situation raises profound questions about responsibility, liability, and the limits of technology. The legal framework is struggling to keep pace with the capabilities of AI. California has laws against deepfake pornography, but enforcement is challenging when apps are designed to evade detection.

The app stores are in a difficult position. They are platforms that host millions of apps, and they cannot possibly review every update to every app. But they also profit from these apps through fees and commissions. When they continue to host harmful apps, they are effectively profiting from exploitation.

The moral questions are equally weighty. The technology itself is not inherently evil. The same AI capabilities that power nudification apps can also be used for legitimate purposes, such as art, education, or entertainment. But the primary use case for these apps is clearly harmful. The companies that create and distribute them are making a choice to prioritize profit over human dignity.

The Path Forward

Chiu’s hope is that Apple and Google will immediately remove these apps and strengthen their screening systems to make sure that apps like this never get onto their platforms in the future. He has made it clear that if they do not, his office will have to consider all legal options.

The outcome of this situation will have significant implications for the broader tech industry. It will set precedents for how app stores are regulated and how AI generated content is handled. It will also test whether companies are willing to take meaningful action to protect vulnerable populations, even when it costs them revenue.

In the end, the nudification crisis is a symptom of a larger problem. The technology is advancing faster than our ability to understand its implications or regulate its use. The victims are real people whose lives are being destroyed by tools that should never have been created in the first place. The challenge for society is to find a way to harness the benefits of AI while protecting against its harms.

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