San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu sent cease-and-desist letters to Apple and Google on July 17, targeting 13 apps that he says generate nonconsensual intimate images of real people. Eight sit on Apple’s App Store, five on Google Play. Most are marketed as face-swap tools.
The move shifts the pressure point. Regulators have spent years chasing the developers behind these tools, who tend to be offshore, thinly incorporated, and quick to reappear under a new name. Chiu went after the two companies that distribute them and take a cut.
Two California statutes anchor the demand. The first criminalizes knowingly facilitating, or recklessly aiding and abetting, the creation of nonconsensual deepfake pornography. The second, passed in 2025, lets victims sue third-party facilitators directly rather than only the person who made the image.
That second law is the one app stores should read closely. It puts distribution platforms inside the circle of potential defendants, and Chiu’s letters are an early test of how far it reaches.
Both companies have 28 days from the letter to contact the city or face possible civil penalties. Chiu’s office pointed to Tech Transparency Project reports from January and April of this year as evidence of how widely the apps circulated, and alleged that Apple and Google together may have collected millions of dollars in fees connected to them. That figure is the city attorney’s characterization, not an audited number.
“Apple and Google are profiting off apps that exploit women and girls by generating nonconsensual intimate deepfakes,” Chiu said.
What the platforms did
Both companies moved before the deadline, which suggests neither wanted this argued in public.
Apple said nudify apps are already forbidden under its rules, that it had removed three of the named apps and was terminating those developer accounts, and that it was in contact with four others that must fix policy violations or face removal. Google said all five apps named on Play had been suspended, and described a wider effort: suspending hundreds of violating apps and restricting search terms including “nudify.”
Why this matters beyond two app stores
For an industry built on consent and documentation, nonconsensual synthetic imagery is a direct threat to the licensing and release framework legitimate producers operate under. Performers have been among the most visible targets of these tools, and a takedown regime that only reaches individual developers has never kept pace.
The open question is whether facilitator liability sticks. If California can hold a distribution platform responsible for what it lists and monetizes, the same logic reaches hosting providers, ad networks, and payment companies. Both platforms complied quickly here without conceding the legal point, so the statute has not yet been tested in court. The next set of letters, to a company less willing to pull apps, is where that gets decided.
