What we found
On 20 May 2026 the Federal Trade Commission said it had sent warning letters to a dozen websites that offer so-called "nudify" tools, which take a clothed image of a person and generate a sexualized image of them without consent. The FTC states that the TAKE IT DOWN Act requires platforms to give people a way to request removal of intimate photos or videos shared without their consent, and to remove them within 48 hours of a valid request. According to the FTC, the twelve companies appear to be in violation of the law because they fail to provide any process through which victims can request removal of nonconsensual intimate images appearing on their platforms. The agency says it began enforcing the law on 19 May 2026 and that companies which do not come into compliance could face civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. The FTC also says its Chairman wrote last week to major platforms reminding them of their obligation to comply, and published guidance for businesses on meeting the law's requirements. If an intimate image of you has been posted without your consent, submit a removal request through the platform's own reporting or takedown form and write down the exact date and time you sent it, so you can show when the 48-hour clock started. Our harvested material does not name the twelve companies that received the letters, and does not say whether any of them have since added a removal process. We also have nothing describing how many people have been targeted by these tools, or how a removal request is judged to be valid. LIVEFRAUD ALERTS is an independent consumer awareness desk with no affiliation to the Federal Trade Commission; this alert was written from a single official FTC press release and nothing else.
- The entire finding rests on one official FTC press release, quoted directly for the 48-hour requirement, the enforcement start date and the penalty figure.
- No second source corroborates the enforcement action, so the account is one-sided by construction.
- The row is dated and attributed, and every claim sentence stays inside wording the release itself uses.
- Reviewed by 3 models, 2 from independent houses.
THE RULE
Sites that strip clothing from ordinary photos may offer no way to get the resulting images taken down, leaving the person pictured with no route to removal.
What we don’t know
- Which twelve companies received the warning letters.
- Whether any of the warned companies have added a removal request process since the letters were sent.
- What makes a removal request "valid" under the law, and what a person should do if a platform ignores one.
- How many people have had images made of them by these tools.
- Whether the FTC has opened any legal action beyond the letters.
The bench — who voted
3 INDEPENDENT AI MODELS REVIEWED THIS. 2 OF 3 — ONE MODEL DISSENTED. READ WHY.
The card names a count. Here are the seats behind it, with what each one said.
ANTHROPICclaude-opus-5 · HIGH
The single evidence row establishes only that the FTC said it sent warning letters to a dozen 'nudify' sites and that those sites appear to violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act by providing no removal mechanism. It says nothing about a 48-hour takedown deadline, an enforcement start date of 19 May 2026, civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation, a Chairman's letters to major platforms 'last week', or published business guidance. Each of those is asserted in the finding without a supporting row, and the 48-hour figure is load-bearing in the headline claim.
DISSENT, PRESERVEDI would not publish the 48-hour figure or the $53,088 penalty figure without a row quoting them; if they do come from the same press release, add the rows rather than leaving the reader to trust the writer's summary.
DISSENT, PRESERVEDThe underlying subject matter warrants a high risk grade regardless of the sourcing gaps: nonconsensual intimate imagery is severe, time-sensitive harm, and an alert that implies a guaranteed 48-hour removal from operators who by the FTC's own account have no removal process could leave victims waiting instead of escalating. If the alert is published, it should tell readers what to do when there is no takedown form at all.
GROQopenai/gpt-oss-120b · MODERATE
Finding adds details not present in the evidence: 48‑hour removal deadline, enforcement start date (19 May 2026), potential civil penalties of $53,088, Chairman’s letter to major platforms, published guidance, and victim advice. These expand beyond the source which only states FTC sent warning letters to a dozen sites for lacking a removal process.
OPENROUTERopenrouter/free · MODERATE
The evidence rows do not contain any mention of the 48‑hour takedown requirement; they only state that the FTC warned the sites for lacking a removal request process. Therefore the claim that the FTC warned sites they must remove images within 48 hours goes beyond what the evidence supports.
Reviewed by 3 independent models; all judged the finding to go beyond the evidence.
▼ Protocol & challenge record
Objection (high): The advice sentence contradicts the core finding. The whole point of the FTC action is that these twelve nudify sites 'fail to provide any process through which victims can request removal.' Telling a reader — under a callout addressed to VICTIMS OF INTIMATE IMAGE ABUSE — to 'submit a removal request through the platform's own reporting or takedown form' is unactionable for exactly the platforms this alert is about, and risks leaving a victim believing they have a remedy that the source says does not exist on those sites. It also silently converts the source's 'valid request' into any request, when the desk's own unknowns list concedes it does not know what makes a request valid. The advice must either be scoped to platforms that do have a reporting form, or state plainly that the warned sites may have no form at all.
Not resolved — preserved on the record.
Objection (medium): Relative time smuggled from the press release: 'its Chairman wrote last week to major platforms.' 'Last week' is relative to 20 May 2026 in the release, not to the reader's reading date. Once this alert is more than a few days old the sentence is simply wrong. Fix to an absolute frame ('in the week before 20 May 2026').
Resolved: Replace 'last week' with 'in the week before 20 May 2026'.
Objection (medium): The confidence block is internally inconsistent. One of the three stated reasons for 'high' is 'No second source corroborates the enforcement action, so the account is one-sided by construction' — that is a reason to lower confidence, not to hold it high. The claim as worded is only about what the FTC said and did, which a primary FTC release does support, but the reason list as written reads as if the desk graded uncorroborated single-sourcing as a confidence booster.
Not resolved — preserved on the record.
Objection (medium): Risk line overreaches: 'leaving the person pictured with no route to removal.' The source supports only that these sites appear to provide no removal process on their own platforms. It says nothing about other routes (FTC enforcement, TIDA's other provisions, hosting providers, search de-indexing). Asserting 'no route to removal' is an absence claim the single source does not license. Suggest 'no route to removal through the site itself.'
Resolved: Amend risk line to '...leaving the person pictured with no route to removal through the site itself.'
Objection (medium): The directive/targeting machinery produced garbage that should not have survived QA. targeting_dropped lists tokens 'make' and 'fake' as if they were named groups, and directive_options include 'Send this to any warning-letter you know' and 'Forward this to the warning-letters in your life.' The final share_directive is correctly null, but these artefacts indicate an entity-extraction failure on this row and cast doubt on whether the §11 Rule 2 check ran on real candidates.
Not resolved — preserved on the record.
Objection (low): Penalty compression: the release says companies that fail to comply 'could face legal action from the FTC, which could result in civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.' The finding renders this as noncompliant companies 'could face civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation,' dropping the intervening step of an enforcement action. Small, but it makes the penalty sound automatic.
Resolved: Restore the intermediate step: 'companies that do not come into compliance could face legal action from the FTC, which the agency says could result in civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.'
Objection (low): Domain/entity check is clean but under-attributed: ftc.gov URL and the Chairman (Andrew N. Ferguson) match the release, yet the finding says only 'its Chairman.' Naming him costs nothing and makes the item independently verifiable. Similarly, the release does name the fifteen major platforms that received Ferguson's letters — the limitation line ('does not name the twelve companies') is accurate about the nudify recipients but a reader may wrongly infer nothing was named.
Resolved: Name Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in the sentence about the letters to major platforms; leave the limitation line as-is but narrow it to 'does not name the twelve nudify companies that received the warning letters.'
Objection (low): Framing/icon mismatch. This is a regulatory compliance action against companies, not a fraud scheme aimed at consumers. The 'link' watch icon implies a link-based lure vector that the source never describes. Also unmentioned: TIDA was signed in May 2025 with a one-year compliance runway, which is why enforcement started 19 May 2026 — omitting it makes the enforcement date look arbitrary.
Not resolved — preserved on the record.
Preserved dissent
ON THE RECORDI do not accept the 'high' confidence grade as reasoned. Listing 'no second source corroborates the enforcement action, so the account is one-sided by construction' as a reason FOR high confidence is backwards. The correct formulation is that we are highly confident about what the FTC announced and not confident about anything else, including whether the twelve companies are in fact in violation — a characterisation the letters themselves hedge as 'appear to be'.
ON THE RECORDThe advice sentence is the worst thing in this draft and I would hold the item until it is fixed. We open with ATTENTION: VICTIMS OF INTIMATE IMAGE ABUSE and then tell those victims to use 'the platform's own reporting or takedown form' — on platforms our single source says have no such form. That is advice that will fail the reader at the moment they most need it to work. Telling someone to timestamp a request they cannot send is not a safeguard, it is theatre.
ON THE RECORDI also think 'leaving the person pictured with no route to removal' should not have shipped in any form. We inferred a total absence of remedy from a source that describes only the absence of an on-site process.
The sources
Official sourceFTC Sends Warning Letters to Companies About Compliance with the TAKE IT DOWN Act2026-05-20
On 20 May 2026 the Federal Trade Commission said it had sent warning letters to a dozen websites offering "nudify" tools, stating they appear to violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act by providing no way for victims to request removal of nonconsensual intimate images.
Authority: official. Retrieved 2026-08-20.
Limitation: The release is the FTC's own account of its action; it does not identify the twelve recipients, describe any victim's experience, or report the outcome of the letters.
Open the original source →Other checks
Published under standing founder pass (A9) — every claim source-mapped by the machine.
▼ What the machine checked
- ✓ Not a community submission.
- ✗ Draws on an FTC enforcement release, which names a defendant: "FTC Sends Warning Letters to Companies About Compliance with the TAKE IT DOWN Ac".
- ✓ All 5 material sentence(s) map to FTC.
- ✗ anthropic returned "overstated"; groq returned "overstated"; openrouter returned "overstated" — published on the receipt, not blocking (A9 amendment).
- ✓ No audience band is set.
No human affirmed these. They were verified by the classifier described in Amendment A9, on 2026-08-20.
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