Fake images

Meta sues 'nudify' apps, those that remove clothes with AI

Mark Zuckerberg's giant takes the Hong Kong company behind Crush AI, the app that undresses photos and creates erotic videos, to court

by Chiara Ricciolini

14 June 2025

2' min read

Key points

What are nudify apps
The Meta decision

2' min read

Meta announced yesterday that it will take legal action against Joy Timeline HK Limited, the Hong Kong-based company behind Crush AI, an app that employs generative artificial intelligence to create fake images of real, naked people without their consent.

What are nudify apps

Through the Crush AI website, it is in fact possible to turn a photo of a real person dressed into a synthetic video depicting him or her naked, performing explicit sexual acts or erotic poses. According to Meta, there has been an exponential growth of these nudify apps, which have used the social channels of Facebook and Instagram to advertise themselves.

According to the study "Analysing the AI nudification application ecosystem", published in November 2024 by the Universities of Florida and Washington, AI-based 'nudification' apps constitute a vast, aggressive and unregulated commercial ecosystem.

An analysis of 20 easily accessible online platforms shows that 95 per cent of them are designed to take the clothes off women's photographs, making them the subject of sexual content of all kinds. 45% of the sites allow the generation of simulated sexual acts, such as penetration or BDSM practices.

Services are pay-as-you-go, with an average cost of USD 0.31 per image, and almost all platforms incentivise the use of cryptocurrencies, often as the only method of payment. Account cancellation is almost impossible: only one platform in 20 allows it. The authors warn that these tools represent a new form of digital sexual violence and call for urgent regulatory intervention.

Meta's decision

Zuckerberg's company explains its decision to file a lawsuit to 'prevent Joy Timeline from advertising Crush AI apps on Meta platforms' and states that this 'follows Joy Timeline HK Limited's multiple attempts to circumvent Meta's ad review process and continue to run these ads, after they were repeatedly removed for breaking our rules'.

The company also announced a strengthening and expansion of the tools used to detect AI-based nude app advertisements.

"With nudify apps advertised on the Internet and available in the App Stores themselves, removing them from one platform is not enough. Now, when we remove ads, accounts or content promoting these services, we will share the information, starting with the URLs of the infringing apps and websites, with other technology companies through the Tech Coalition's Lantern programme so they can investigate and take action in turn."

In the past year, Meta found that Crush AI circumvented moderation by creating dozens of different domains, hundreds of advertiser accounts, and thousands of individual advertisements.

Nudifier' ads often avoid showing explicit nudity or include only a few frames of nudity within longer videos. This makes automatic classifiers for detecting sexual content less effective.

Meta announced that it has developed a customised classifier to identify ads that contain nudity, even when it is not explicit. It also promises faster action on similar ads that have already been removed and flagged.