San Francisco orders Apple, Google to purge 'nudify' apps

San Francisco just did something a platform policy page could not. City Attorney David Chiu sent formal demand letters to Apple and Google giving them 28 days to remove dozens of 'nudify' apps from their stores or face civil penalties under California law, TechCrunch reported. The apps digitally alter photos to unclothe the person in them, and California's 2025 statute lets victims pursue civil actions against third parties that 'knowingly facilitate' the creation of non-consensual deepfake material.

The letters land after months of public warning. The Tech Transparency Project published a report in January 2026 identifying nudify apps in both the App Store and Google Play, and a follow-up in April 2026 finding the same apps still available and still earning revenue. TTP called Apple and Google 'key participants in the spread of AI tools that can turn real people into sexualized images', and noted that many of the apps were rated 'E' for Everyone, enabling children to download them.

Both companies moved once the letters arrived. Apple said it had removed three of the flagged apps and was terminating the developer accounts behind them. Google said the five Play Store apps referenced in Chiu's letter had been suspended. Chiu's own framing was blunt: 'Apple and Google are profiting off apps that exploit women and girls by generating nonconsensual intimate deepfakes.'

The honest caveat is that this is a municipal demand letter, not a court ruling, and the numbers are what the reporting gives us: dozens flagged by TTP, a handful removed at first pass, 'millions of dollars in fees' as Chiu's estimate rather than an audited figure. What the reporting does not give you is the underlying commission math, whether flagged apps are already returning under new developer names, or how deep the promotion inside the stores actually ran.

For anyone running a generative-AI marketplace, the useful takeaway is that trust-and-safety review used to be a compliance line item and is now the thing standing between an app store and a civil docket. Cities with willing attorneys can compel takedowns on a 28-day clock, and California's 2025 law hands victims their own path to sue the platforms directly.