The EU is banning nudify apps starting in December, but a digital rights advocate says victims could end up worse off

The European Union is officially cracking down on AI nudify apps, with a new ban set to take effect on December 2. The move is a major part of the broader AI Act, which aims to rein in some of the most harmful applications of artificial intelligence. The goal is to stop the creation of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes, though there is debate about how the rules will be enforced in practice.

As detailed by UNILAD Tech, this technology has become a massive problem. About 98 percent of AI porn videos currently online are nonconsensual, and roughly 99 percent of that content targets women. The urgency of this issue was highlighted when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had fake images of herself in lingerie go viral, and while she joked that the AI actually improved her appearance, she made clear the technology is being used to attack people and spread falsehoods.

Posting on Facebook, she said the fake images were generated using AI and passed off as real by some of her opponents, adding that people are now willing to use absolutely anything to attack and spread falsehoods. The new legislation targets systems that generate child sexual abuse material or create images, videos, and audio depicting an identifiable person’s intimate parts or sexually explicit activities without consent. Providers are now barred from placing these systems on the EU market unless they include robust technical safeguards.

Experts remain skeptical about how the rules will actually be enforced

Companies that fail to comply could face fines of up to €35 million or 7 percent of their worldwide turnover from the previous financial year, and they have until December 2, 2026, to bring their systems into line with these requirements. Sadia Berdaï, head of the AI Innovation and Technology Unit at Luxembourg’s Data Protection Authority, has been clear that this is not a total prohibition on the technology itself.

She explained that the rules are about the intended purpose and the way the systems are used, not the technology itself. Tech Policy Press has pointed out that many national authorities might not actually have the legal powers to enforce these rules effectively, a concern that echoes scrutiny already directed at platforms like X, which announced new limits on Grok’s image tool after similar backlash over sexualized AI deepfakes.

Michael McNamara, a member of the European Parliament and co-rapporteur of the AI Omnibus, emphasized that the systems being targeted are designed to strip clothes from photographs of real people. These people are overwhelmingly women and children, and it is done in order to humiliate, degrade, and objectify them at scale for profit.

There is also a significant concern regarding the burden of proof. Because victims must be identifiable under the General Data Protection Regulation, they have to prove their identity through names, faces, or other specific characteristics. Belén Luna Sanz, a digital rights advocate, believes this creates a much higher threshold for protection, arguing that it raises the bar for victims at the level of product safety and enforcement.

Other researchers, like Silvia Semenzin, have raised questions about cultural nuances in how intimacy is defined across different contexts, and she believes the responsibility shouldn’t rest on the victim. Arguing that the person creating or sharing the images should have to prove they had consent rather than forcing victims to prove afterward that they did not authorize it.

While many providers already have internal rules to curb this type of content, the landscape remains messy. Some platforms, including Elon Musk’s Grok, have drawn scrutiny for their ability to create nonconsensual images of people, an issue that prompted multiple countries to restrict access to X over its handling of similar deepfake content.