TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Tech giants Apple and Google are facing legal action in San Francisco, United States, related to the proliferation of fashion AI-based editing apps available on the App Store and Play Store. Due to privacy policy violations and the unauthorized use of images in AI platforms, the two tech giants were asked to remove dozens of nudify apps.
The city government of San Francisco has issued a strict legal order to Apple and Google to restructure their app stores and remove these AI editing apps. This policy is considered in line with consumer protection regulations and gender-based anti-violence laws in the country.
"Apple and Google are profiting off apps that exploit women and girls by generating nonconsensual intimate deepfakes," said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu in a statement quoted from Techcrunch on Monday, July 20, 2026.
Apple immediately responded to the issue. A company spokesperson stated that the nudify apps have been prohibited from appearing in the App Store, and three related apps have already been removed. "We are in contact with four others that need to address policy violations or risk being removed as well," the statement read.
Likewise, Google claimed that it has suspended five apps that were proven to have violated policies by including pornographic content in the Play Store. "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," a Google spokesperson said.
Due to their extensive user base using them for photo editing, nudify apps have been a digital legal concern for some time. Women have been the primary victims of this problem. With the app, users only need to input a prompt, and it will automatically edit the image as requested, including removing clothing and similar alterations.
Read: Google's Strategy to Combat AI-Generated Spam, Disinformation
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