Minnesota became the first and only state in the nation to ban companies from making nudification technology available

On August 1, 2026, Minnesota became the first and only state in the nation to ban companies from making nudification technology available, following the signing of the law by Governor Tim Walz on May 7. The law regulates the nudification function within apps rather than banning deepfake apps altogether, a distinction drawn to address First Amendment concerns; proponents argued that the widespread availability of apps with nudification technology has made it possible for any person at the grocery store, sitting in church, going to school, or attending a sports event to be victimized. The Minnesota law represents a novel statutory approach focused on the technology's availability rather than downstream distribution or possession.

Blanket bans on specific software categories or age-based platform exclusions displace offenders to unmonitored channels and impose privacy and access costs on compliant users; they do not, on their own, detect or interrupt the coercion, escalation, or distribution that follows once a nudified image is created. Guardii's anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM modules detect the threat pattern itself, identifying when a conversation shifts toward solicitation, extortion, or the sharing of explicit or AI-manipulated material in direct messages, and surface that risk to a parent, school counselor, or law-enforcement contact in real time, addressing the harm at the point it occurs across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox, and other platforms.