AI nudifying apps – an exploding trend online – do exactly what their name suggests: take photos of people who are clothed and make them appear nude. 99% of victims are female, and include both female celebrities and average tween and teen girls. Yet Google actively promotes both these tools and the images they make in search results and in their Play store. Google must stop promoting non-consensual nudes and the tools to make them.

Nudifying apps and programs do one thing – make a naked image of someone without their consent. Cases have been popping up around the country of kids using these apps on innocent photos of their classmates and then circulating the images. Victims report feeling harassed, violated, and traumatized.

Creating sexual images of children, even with AI, is illegal. However, a Google search for “nudify app” yields dozens of results on the first page, giving people easy access to these unethical and harmful tools. The Play Store hosts apps with names like “Body Scanner 18+”. A Google search for “AI celebrity nudes” returns disturbing images of child stars like Emma Watson, Demi Lovato, and Zendaya who are now adults but appear as children and teens in the sexual and often violent images, as well as images of celebrities having sex with characters from Sesame Street and other children’s characters.  

Nudify apps are harmful and unethical, and they contribute to the growing problem of child sexual abuse images on the internet. Google must stop promoting these tools and the images that result from them in search.