After facing flak, Apple, Google begin to take down AI Nudify apps from their platforms

They generally describe themselves as just editing apps, offering the option to turn women's photos into scantily dressed and even fully strip the clothes off the people.

Earlier this year, we saw Elon Musk's X Corp facing flak for not regulating its generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) Grok bot to allow users to edit pictures of women for malicious purposes.

Now, it has come to light that Apple and Google are allowing several similar gen AI 'Nudify' applications on the respective platforms-- App Store and Play Store.

As per the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) report, hundreds of apps with more than 500 million installations were active on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

What's even worse is that the apps, which generally describe themselves as editing apps, are categorised as 'E', meaning available for everyone to download. They go beyond basic editing like 'Magic Eraser' to remove objects, photo bombers or background people in the image. The apps offer the option to turn women's photos into scantily dressed and even fully strip the clothes off the people.

With such apps accessible to children as young as 13 in several countries, they can be grossly misused against girls and women.

This is a very dangerous precedent and has to be curbed soon. TTP report noted that bad AI-nudify app developers generated more than $122 million in revenue

Taking note of the report, Google and Apple have begun taking down the AI-Nudify apps from the platforms.

Apple has even notified X Corp to further regulate the Grok AI app from generating objectionable images of women, or else it faces the risk of getting deplatformed.

So far, Apple has removed 15 apps, and Google has shut down seven such applications from its platform.

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