eSafety has begun enforcement action against another popular AI-powered 'nudifying' service for not doing enough to protect children from exposure to sexually explicit deepfake images, including those of real people.
eSafety has issued a formal Direction to Comply to one of the most popular 'nudify' services accessed in Australia, visited tens of thousands of times a month, giving the company 14 days to implement stronger protections to prevent children from accessing its service.
The service allows users to upload images of real people and generate on-demand, sexually explicit deepfake content-posing serious risks, including potential non-consensual exploitation and harms to children.
Abuses enabled by these types of technologies may also include high impact cyberbullying, sexual extortion, image-based sexual abuse, misogynistic harassment and exploitation of minors.
eSafety has moved quickly to issue the Direction to Comply under the Age-Restricted Material Codes (ARM Codes), which commenced in March 2026.
Coming two months after the commencement of the Codes, the enforcement action demonstrates eSafety will take a strong stance on non-compliance, particularly where services are high risk and demonstrate no willingness to cooperate.
The Codes are designed to protect children from accessing or being exposed to age-restricted material, including high-impact violence; self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating; as well as pornography.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the enforcement action demonstrates Australia's strong commitment to protecting children from exposure to a range of harmful material and ensuring generative AI services have adequate and age appropriate safety guardrails.
"The popularity of this 'nudify' platform and the ease of which children can access it is deeply concerning. These are services that enable the creation of sexually explicit content involving real people and are extremely caustic to adults (mostly women) but also pose an unacceptable risk to children.
"I like many others struggle to see a positive use case for such services as it is, and services like these demonstrates where AI is causing irreparable harms today.
"Thankfully, eSafety was able to ensure our world-leading codes required the purveyors and profiteers of such services to put measures in place to, at the very least, prevent children from accessing their platform.
"We have been clear with industry about the need to put safeguards in place under the Age-Restricted Material Codes which they themselves drafted. As this action demonstrates, for those companies that refuse to engage or fail to act, we will not hesitate to use our enforcement powers.
"Protecting children from exposure to harmful and age-inappropriate content is a core priority, and we expect providers offering services to and profiting from Australian end-users, including children - no matter where they are based - to follow Australian law.
The enforcement action follows a sharp increase in Australian traffic to this service over the past six months. As of March 2026, the platform was attracting nearly 40,000 Australian visits per month.
This is the first enforcement action taken by eSafety under the ARM Codes for systemic non-compliance and a Direction to Comply represents the first step in a graduated enforcement process.
eSafety sought to engage with the provider shortly after the Codes came into effect, seeking to ensure they implemented appropriate safeguards. However, the Argentina-based provider failed to respond and has not committed to improving protections for children.
As the provider has not responded to this engagement eSafety considers it appropriate to issue a formal direction to comply which, if not met, gives rises to further enforcement options for eSafety.
If the service fails to meet the requirements within the 14-day timeframe, eSafety may pursue further regulatory action, including seeking civil penalties of up to $49.5 million and issuing delisting notices to search engine providers that help facilitate access to the site.
eSafety has chosen not to name the service to avoid inadvertently promoting them.
This enforcement action follows eSafety's earlier action in late 2025 that led to three other widely used nudify services, which had been used to generate child sexual exploitation material in schools, to withdraw from Australia.
These services have since been relaunched with a new owner but now have additional safety measures in place, including mandatory age assurance requirements.
eSafety's latest enforcement action comes after the Australian Government announced in September last year its intention to legislate a ban on nudify services to prevent the non-consensual generation of sexually explicit material, including child sexual exploitation content.
eSafety will continue using all powers currently available to it until any additional requirements and powers come into force.
