San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu ordered Apple and Google on July 17 to remove 13 AI "nudify" apps from their stores — tools that use generative image models to digitally undress real people without consent — in what is billed as the first municipal-level app-store removal mandate of its kind in the US.
The apps
The 13 apps — eight on Apple's App Store and five on Google Play — largely market themselves as harmless "face-swap" tools, while quietly offering the ability to fabricate sexual deepfakes once installed. Chiu argues that framing is a fig leaf for the real product.
The legal theory
The cease-and-desist letters lean on California's Unfair Competition Law and statutes against nonconsensual intimate imagery, accusing the platforms of "aiding and abetting" harm by distributing the apps and taking a cut of their revenue. The companies have 28 days to respond or face civil penalties of at least $25,000 per violation. Chiu said both had been "on notice" for roughly a year.
The companies respond
Both moved quickly. Apple said it had "removed three of the apps in question and are in the process of terminating their developer accounts," and was in contact over four others. Google said all five flagged Play apps had been suspended and that it has deleted "hundreds" of nudify apps overall.
A municipal first
The action's significance is the venue. By using existing consumer-protection law at the city level, Chiu routes around slow-moving federal legislation and targets the two gatekeepers with the power to actually pull the apps. If it holds, the playbook is easy for other city and state attorneys to copy. Chiu also argued the platforms likely earned millions in in-app fees from tools both officially prohibit — a gap between written policy and actual enforcement that the letters are designed to force closed.