San Francisco Legal Notices Target 13 AI Face-Swap Apps On Apple And Google Stores
WIRED reported that San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu sent legal notices demanding Apple and Google remove 13 face-swapping apps from their app stores and end business relationships with the developers. Google said the five Android apps flagged by the office were deleted, while Apple did not comment before publication.
Thirteen AI face-swapping apps are now the subject of San Francisco AI nudify app legal notices aimed at Apple and Google, after City Attorney David Chiu demanded removals from the App Store and Google Play.
The Thursday notices told the platforms to halt support for the sale of explicit deepfake images and end business relationships with the developers behind the apps.
San Francisco Legal Notices Name 13 Face-Swap Apps
The notices covered eight apps on Apple’s App Store and five on Google Play.
Chiu told WIRED that generating non-consensual intimate images is illegal, harmful and unacceptable, and added that Apple and Google likely made millions of dollars in fees from apps offering nudification.
The city attorney’s letters cited California law that prohibits supporting services used to create deepfake pornography.
The apps use in-app payments, and the report noted that the companies take a cut of those transactions.
The report said the city attorney’s office had previously taken legal action against 16 popular deepfake websites.
The latest letters argued that Apple and Google have responsibility for ensuring that apps on their platforms are not used to facilitate sexual abuse.
Google Deletes Five Flagged Android Apps
Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told WIRED that the company had removed hundreds of nudifying apps for policy violations, including the five Android apps flagged by Chiu’s office.
Jackson said Google Play does not allow apps containing sexual content and that the company investigates policy breaches.
WIRED published without Apple comment before its deadline.
Both Apple and Google have developer policies that prohibit pornography, abuse and harassment, and both companies have previously removed dozens of nudify and deepfake apps after findings by researchers and journalists.
The targeted apps broadly advertised themselves as face-swapping tools, while sexual deepfake features became available once people used them.
One app website claimed more than 1 million downloads, and another targeted app claimed to produce free and uncensored videos.
Research Found Dual-Use Face-Swap App Risk
The Tech Transparency Project identified around 100 apps across the App Store and Google Play in January and April this year, according to WIRED.
The report said the research estimated the apps had been downloaded around 480 million times and may have generated around $120 million in combined revenue.
A May preprint by researchers at Cornell University and Georgetown University identified 420 general face-swapping apps on Apple and Google app stores.
The researchers tested 155 of them and found that 70 percent could be used to create face swaps with nude images without safety measures that prevented the output.
The Cornell and Georgetown researchers described the apps as dual-use tools that can appear benign while still being capable of creating harmful content.
The city attorney told WIRED that his office wants Apple and Google to remove the apps and strengthen screening systems before similar tools reach the stores.
The office linked the notices to a broader campaign against non-consensual intimate imagery.
WIRED did not report Apple's response to the notices.
