A 17-year-old girl from New Jersey has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against the developers of ClothOff, an AI-powered tool that strips clothing from photos, after a classmate used it to create fake nude images of her when she was just 14 years old.
The case, supported by a Yale Law School professor and his students, targets AI/Robotics Venture Strategy3, the British Virgin Islands-based company behind ClothOff. Telegram, where the tool was accessible through bots, is also named in the suit as a “nominal defendant.”
Student Sues Makers of AI Tool ClothOff Over Fabricated Nude Images Shared at School
Two years ago, several girls at Westfield High School made a disturbing discovery: a male student had taken photos from their social media accounts and run them through an AI tool to generate realistic-looking nude images. According to The Wall Street Journal, some male classmates then shared these fabricated images in group chats.
The plaintiff says she was one of multiple victims at the school. She alleges that a classmate used a photo of her in a swimsuit to create the fake nude. That student is being sued separately, though he isn’t named in the current lawsuit against ClothOff’s makers.
The lawsuit makes several serious allegations. The plaintiff argues that these AI-generated images constitute child sexual abuse material (CSAM), even though they’re not real photographs. She’s asking a judge to order AI/Robotics Venture Strategy3 to delete and destroy all nude images it possesses of adults and children who didn’t consent, stop using such images to train its AI models, and completely remove both the website and the ClothOff tool.
The company behind ClothOff, believed to be operated by residents of Belarus, claims it’s impossible to process images of minors on its platform and that attempting to do so will result in an account ban. The developer also insists it doesn’t save any data.
However, a 2024 investigation by The Guardian painted a different picture. At the time, ClothOff was attracting more than 4 million visitors per month, and the publication found evidence the app had been used to generate nude images of children worldwide.
The Lawsuit Against AI Deepfakes and Their Lasting Victim Impact
The impact on the now-17-year-old plaintiff has been severe. She says she lives in “constant fear” that the faked image of her exists somewhere on the internet. Beyond her personal trauma, she’s concerned that images of her and her classmates are being used to train ClothOff’s AI system, potentially making it even better at creating similar content.
Telegram has since removed ClothOff from its platform. A spokesperson said clothes-removing tools and non-consensual pornography violate the company’s terms of service and are removed when discovered.
This lawsuit is just the latest chapter in an escalating battle against AI-powered “nudify” tools. The problem actually predates the current generative AI boom. Back in 2020, a deepfake bot on Telegram had already created over 100,000 fake naked photos of women using images from social media.
Last year, San Francisco’s Attorney’s office sued 16 undressing websites. More recently, Meta took legal action against the maker of the Crush AI Nudify app in June 2024 after 8,000 ads for the service appeared on its platforms in just two weeks.
The advertising problem is particularly troubling. Senator Dick Durbin highlighted in February 2025 that 90% of online traffic to one Nudify app originated from Meta advertising. He publicly called on Mark Zuckerberg to take action, saying the situation “creates new victims of deepfake intimate imagery.”
First-of-its-Kind Deepfake Pornography Lawsuit Takes Aim at Website Owners, AI Makers, and Platforms
Legal experts consider this a first-of-its-kind lawsuit that alleges website owners and operators violate California and federal laws prohibiting deepfake pornography, revenge pornography, and child pornography.
The case raises difficult questions about accountability in the age of AI. When a tool is used to harm someone, who’s responsible? The person who used it? The company that made it? The platform that hosted it? This lawsuit suggests the answer might be all of the above.
For now, the teenage plaintiff waits for her day in court, hoping for justice and the removal of a tool she says has caused immeasurable harm to her and countless others.
