San Francisco is pressuring the world's two largest app stores to stop distributing AI tools that create fake nude images of real people.
According to Wired's Matt Burgess, the city's Office of the City Attorney sent legal notices to Apple and Google this week demanding they take down 13 AI apps used to make deepfake nude images. Wired reports the office issued cease-and-desist letters telling the two companies to stop profiting from the apps. Google, according to Wired, says it has already deleted the apps in question.
Such tools are commonly known as "nudify" apps, which use artificial intelligence to digitally strip clothing from photographs and generate explicit images of people who never consented to them. Ars Technica reports that San Francisco ordered Apple and Google to remove the nudify apps from their app stores, and that official estimates suggest Google and Apple likely made millions of dollars in fees connected to the apps.
The action puts a spotlight on the role of app-store operators, which take a cut of the money that flows through their platforms. By framing the demand around profit — telling the companies to "stop profiting," per Wired — San Francisco is arguing the gatekeepers bear responsibility for the harmful software they host and monetize, not just the developers who build it.
Why it matters: Deepfake nudify apps have become a fast-growing tool for harassment and abuse, and San Francisco's move signals that governments are increasingly willing to hold Apple and Google — not just anonymous app makers — accountable for what their stores sell.