Apple and Google are on the ropes. The city of San Francisco has just sent them a clear warning: if they do not remove from their stores all apps that use artificial intelligence to create fake nudes of real people, they could face serious legal sanctions. And no, this is not a simple suggestion, it is an order with a deadline.

What San Francisco asked of the tech giants

City Attorney David Chiu sent formal letters to both Apple and Google demanding the immediate removal of 13 apps known as “nudify.” These apps take normal photos of real people and, using generative AI, digitally remove their clothes, change their physical features or directly glue their faces to naked bodies without any type of consent. Eight of these applications were available in the App Store and five in Google Play, which shows that neither of the two platforms was saved from the problem.

Chiu did not mince his words and directly accused both companies of being “aiding and abetting” the sale of explicit sexual content generated with deepfakes, something that according to him completely violates state laws. The strongest part of the matter is that companies have just 28 days to respond before civil penalties begin to fall. Such a short period makes it clear that the city is not ready to play games with this issue.

Why California law prohibits all this

California has pretty strict legislation when it comes to non-consensual pornography created with artificial intelligence. State regulations explicitly prohibit any activity that facilitates the creation of this type of material, and from 2025 victims can even civilly sue the platforms that allow this to happen. Basically, if a company benefits financially from these apps, even through commissions for in-app purchases, it could also be in legal trouble.

The interesting thing is that this is not the first time these laws have been put on the table. Already in January 2026 there was a similar scandal when a report from the Tech Transparency Project revealed that there were more than 100 apps of this type distributed between both stores, which forced Apple to eliminate 28 applications and Google to suspend another 31. In other words, this problem has been heating up for months and now it finally reached a point where the authorities decided to act more forcefully.

Furthermore, California law does not distinguish between adults and minors, and in fact there are specific regulations such as AB 1831 that further toughen penalties when the victims are minors. This expands the legal scope and puts even more pressure on app stores to be rigorous in what they allow to be published.

Apple and Google's response to the controversy

An Apple spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that nudify-type apps were already banned under its internal policies, and that the company has already removed three of the targeted apps while it moves forward with canceling the accounts of the responsible developers. For its part, Google also defended itself by claiming that it had removed hundreds of “nudification” apps for violating its rules, including the five specifically mentioned in Chiu's letter, and that it also limited searches for terms like “nudify” within the Play Store.

The curious detail is that, although both companies claim to have policies that prohibit this type of content, the reality is that these apps continued to find a way to sneak into the official stores and generate income. This shows that policies alone are not enough if there is no strict and constant application behind them.

What comes next is to wait if Apple and Google manage to comply with the 28-day deadline or if the legal conflict escalates to larger instances. Meanwhile, this case becomes an important precedent to understand the extent to which platforms are responsible when they distribute technology capable of generating harmful content on a large scale.