Minnesota Passes Nation's First Ban on Nudification Apps

The Minnesota Senate passed the United States' first ban on nudification apps on April 30, 2026, by a vote of 65 to zero, following passage by the state House the prior week. The legislation awaits signature by Governor Tim Walz, who is expected to sign. The bill targets websites and apps that promote digital undressing, in which photographs of fully clothed people are uploaded and manipulated with generative AI to appear nude. Investigations by multiple news organisations found that Meta has failed to fully block advertisements for nudification apps on Facebook and Instagram despite having banned them, and the independent outlet Indicator has tracked twenty-three cases of deepfake abuse targeting school communities in the United States since 2023.

A blanket ban on specific tools can reduce supply, but it does not address demand or prevent offenders from adapting to alternative channels. Guardii, a world-leading AI online-safety platform, detects the underlying harm whether the content originates from a nudification service, a text-to-image generator, or any other source. Its anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM detection modules identify coercion, escalation, and sustained targeting in children's direct-message conversations in real time, blocking or flagging contact before it reaches the target and surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional. By operating at the point of contact across multiple platforms, Guardii closes the operational gap between tool-level prohibition and the moment a child receives a threat, a manipulated image, or an extortion demand, enabling intervention before psychological and reputational harm takes hold.