San Francisco demands Apple, Google remove 13 'nudify' apps

On Thursday, David Chiu, San Francisco's city attorney, sent legal notices to Apple and Google demanding removal of 13 face-swapping apps that enable users to create AI-generated nonconsensual nude images. The letters, seen by WIRED, order the companies to stop "aiding and abetting" the sale of explicit deepfake images and to sever business relationships with app developers. Chiu stated: "Generating non-consensual intimate images is illegal, harmful, and completely unacceptable." The city attorney's office contends that Apple and Google have likely made millions of dollars in fees from these apps, which rely on in-app payments that the tech companies profit from.

The 13 targeted apps—8 from Apple's App Store and 5 from Google Play Store—broadly market themselves as face-swapping tools, concealing their nudification capability behind benign-sounding names. One app with more than 1 million downloads displays styles labeled "bikini queen curvy," "calm busty," and "cinematic intimacy," alongside sexualized images of women. Another advertises itself as producing "free and uncensored" videos. The apps exploit what researchers term "dual-use" technology: platforms flag them as ordinary face-swapping utilities and thus evade content moderation, yet they possess the capability to generate sexual deepfakes with minimal friction—often requiring only a reference photo and a few clicks, with results available in seconds.

This is not the first time Apple and Google have faced scrutiny for hosting nudification apps. Over the past year, multiple reports have identified such apps on their platforms. The Tech Transparency Project, an independent watchdog group, uncovered roughly 100 apps across both stores in January and April of this year. Those apps were estimated to have been collectively downloaded around 480 million times and may have made around $120 million（約190億円） in combined revenues. In May, researchers from Cornell University and Georgetown University published a preprint study identifying 420 apps offering general face-swapping capabilities. When they tested 155 of these apps, they found that in 70 percent of cases the apps could be used to create face swaps with nude images, often without safety measures in place.

The harms are documented and severe. Previous reporting by WIRED and Indicator Media has uncovered incidents in at least 90 schools where deepfake sexual abuse images of minors were created. Chiu emphasized the psychological toll: "These images are used to bully, humiliate, and threaten women and girls. This industry has a horrific impact on one's reputation, mental health, loss of autonomy. There have been victims who've been suicidal." The broader context includes the emergence of highly sophisticated deepfake "nudification" technology over the last five years, including notably xAI's Grok, which was used to create millions of sexualized images in January.

Google responded quickly. Spokesperson Dan Jackson told WIRED: "Google Play does not allow apps that contain sexual content, and we continually take proactive steps to detect and remove apps with harmful content. When violations are reported to us, we investigate and take swift action, which in the case of these apps has included suspending hundreds of violating apps and restricting related search terms like 'nudify' on our store." Jackson confirmed that Google has deleted the five Android apps flagged by Chiu's office. Apple, by contrast, did not provide comment ahead of publication. Chiu indicated that his office will keep pursuing the issue: "My 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. It's our hope that these companies will do the right thing—but if they don't, we will have to consider all of our legal options."

San Francisco's cease-and-desist letters mark an escalation in the city's battle against deepfake pornography. The city attorney's office previously pursued legal action against 16 deepfake websites, and this move targets the distribution infrastructure—the major app stores—that have enabled these apps to reach hundreds of millions of downloads. The letters are grounded in California law prohibiting services that create deepfake pornography and the documented harms: researchers from Cornell and Georgetown universities found that 70 percent of 155 face-swapping apps they tested could generate nude images, often without safety measures, despite appearing as benign tools.

Apple and Google have established developer policies prohibiting pornography and abuse, yet independent watchdog groups and academic researchers have repeatedly documented the persistence of nudification apps on their platforms. The Tech Transparency Project identified roughly 100 such apps across both stores in January and April of this year—described by its director as "just as bad, if not worse" than earlier findings. The fact that these companies take a financial cut through in-app payments creates a direct economic incentive to tolerate the apps, a detail the city attorney emphasized in his demand that they "stop profiting" from the technology. Google's immediate statement that it has already removed hundreds of such apps suggests the company may move to comply, though Apple's silence leaves uncertainty about its response.