Nudify Apps and the Road to Destruction

Actress/Director Scarlett Johansson, Source https://www.flickr.com/photos/15512543@N04/2185543324/, Author John Harrison at https://www.flickr.com/photos/15512543@N04/, Permission Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

A new word has entered our vocabulary.  To “nudify” is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create deepfake images which appear to show the individuals depicted as naked [1]. Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson have been among those famously victimized.

Thousands of nudify apps exist to accomplish this, and have rapidly gained popularity [2][3].  Many work only on images of women.  And, as might be expected, many use social media for marketing purposes.

Thus far, victims have typically been school girls who posted innocent photos of themselves online [4].  However, anyone of any age can use these apps to convert harmless online images into what appear to be embarrassing photos and videos of children, teens, teachers, parents, police officers, pastors, or others in the nude. 

Once the nude images have been created, they can circulate on all the digital platforms commonly used for messaging today. 

Impact

Such images are often used as revenge porn with a deliberate intent of humiliating and degrading the individual pictured.  Whatever the intent, the impact on victims is overwhelmingly negative.  Not only embarrassment, but anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation can result.

Legal Liability

The use of nudify apps involves more than youthful indiscretion.  Even minors may potentially face legal consequences for the creation, possession, and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

While state laws vary, the newly enacted Take It Down Act makes the posting or threatened posting of such non-consensual deep fakes a federal crime, and requires that sexually explicit deepfakes be taken down by the platforms hosting them [5][6].

The Corrupt Heart 

It can hardly come as a shock that juveniles would be tempted by this technology, especially in our sexually permissive society.  It is even less surprising that these apps would have been created.  AI has no conscience, and – as the Bible tells us – the human heart is corrupt (Jer. 17: 9).

Pornography

How can men teach their sons respect — let alone empathy — for the girls and women being victimizing, if they do not have such respect or empathy themselves?

The first French nude magazines were published in 1880, as souvenirs for patrons of Parisian music halls.  Playboy Magazine has been published in one form or another since 1953.  Studies have shown that R-rated films have grown increasingly explicit sexually (and increasingly violent), since the rating system was first put in place in 1968 [7]. 

Society has normalized what used to be called pornography.  Rather than depraved, pornography is now seen as a harmless (even healthy) pastime. 

It does not matter that the girls and women depicted are daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.  It does not matter how or why they were drawn or forced into participation.  It does not matter that they once had dreams.  It only matters that they all possess breasts and a vagina.

We cannot teach ethics, if we no longer know the meaning of the word.

Unmoored

But ethics are merely a matter of taste, if they are not grounded in morality.  And that brings us to the crux of the matter, the heart issue.

Our society has all but abandoned morality.  Legality alone cannot replace it.

We cannot feel pity for the girls and women victimized, because we have deadened our senses in the effort to sate them.  Men and women alike, we are unmoored from God’s law.  We have lost our bearings, lost the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. 

Instead, we have convinced ourselves that fulfilling our basest desires is justified; is self-actualization; is, in fact, the highest good — no matter the harm it does, both to ourselves and others.

This is the road to destruction.  Nudify apps are just a symptom, a signpost.  We are already well on our way.  Only God can save us.

“…I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezek. 36: 26-27).

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[1]  Wikipedia, “Deepfake pornography”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake_pornography.

[2]  Time, “‘Nudify’ Apps that Use AI to ‘Undress’ Women in Photos Are Soaring in Popularity” by Margi Murphy, 12/8/23, https://time.com/6344068/nudify-apps-undress-photos-women-artificial-intelligence/.

[3]  The Bark Blog, “Everything Parents Need to Know about Nudify AI Apps” by Allison Scovell, 1/3/25,   https://www.bark.us/blog/nudify-ai-apps/?srsltid=AfmBOoobB2LRl24NhaSPdWG2JL2P9xdK5tbAgy3aPcCmiUtcZvOuKywf.

[4]  The Guardian, “Vomit-inducing deepfake nudes show yet again that when misogynyintersects with AI and elitism, girls get hurt” by Van Badham, 6/12/24, https://www.theguardian.com.commentisfree/article/2024/jun/13/bacchus-marsh-grammar-ai-deepfake-nudes-students-comment.

[5]  US Congress, “S. 146 – Take It Down Act”, https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/text.

[6]  McDonald Hopkins, “The TAKE IT DOWN Act:  A federal response to non-consensual intimate imagery becomes law” by Blair Dawson and Arriana Sajjad, 5/20/25,  https://www.mcdonaldhopkins.com/insights/news/the-take-it-down-act-a-federal-response-to-non-consensual-intimate-imagery.

[7]  Ultraviolet, “The changing criteria of Hollywood’s R-rated movies”, 12/5/23,  https://theultraviolet.com/21734/commentary/the-changing-criteria-of-hollywoods-r-rated-movies/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20code%20prohibited%20profanity%252C%20suggestive%20nudity%252C%20graphic%20or%20realistic%20violence%252C%20sexual%20persuasions%20and%20rape.%E2%80%9D&text=Since%20then%252C%20R-rated%20movies%20have%20increased%20in,in%20recent%20movies%20rated%20R%20and%20lower.

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