Thousands in China pay for AI tools to “ strip with one click”

ANDin March of this year, police dismantled a group in Henan Province (north China) that mailed pictures of naked people (‘nudes’) generated by AI to bank workers in an attempt to blackmail them. A total of 280 blackmail letters were intercepted by the authorities.

CCTV reported that searches for “one click strip” on various social media platforms revealed a significant number of detailed illustrated guides and video tutorials.

“ The titles were highly appealing, such as ‘ stripping and wearing with a click’ and ‘how to strip beautiful women in Photoshop quickly’,” wrote CCTV.

“ In the comments sections of these publications, the ‘bloggers’ disclosed this technique, sharing it directly or inviting people to join groups”, still according to the broadcaster.

In June 2025, the Chinese police arrested a suspect, nicknamed Zhang, for creating groups in “foreign social media platforms” where they sold tutorials about undressing with AI, generating profits over 100,000 yuan (13 thousand euros).

In May this year, Zhang was sentenced to one year and six months in prison and fined 20,000 yuan for the crime of illicit use of computer networks.

Li Tao, prosecutor of the People's Prosecutor's Office of Haidian District in Beijing, told CCTV that one of the Zhang groups had over 21,000 members. “The price of software tools for sale also went up from just over 60 yuan in 2023 to 168 yuan in 2025,” Li added.

The prosecutor explained that the so-called stripping tool “does not effectively remove clothes,” but “is a technique that involves deepfake technology.”.

CCTV wrote that using the tool “it only takes a few seconds to a few minutes to generate a naked image”, adding that “it makes it possible to mass-produce large amounts of obscene images”.

“ This convenience, in turn, gave rise to a parallel industry on the black market. Some people, after acquiring stripping tools with AI, begin to accept orders to create nude photographs, processing them on behalf of third parties by some yuan by image, to make profit”, the station revealed.

In another case, in June 2024, a nickname technician Bai, an employee at an Internet company in Beijing, used AI software based on deepfake technology to create nude images from a large number of photographs of women who contained facial recognition data provided by third parties, which he then sold for profit.

Bai was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of production and sale of obscene material for profit.

Guo Shuzheng, prosecutor of the Haidian Public Prosecutor's Office in Beijing, stated that Bai sold each image for 1.5 yuan (0.19 euros), distributing almost seven thousand images to 351 individuals through social networks, having profited a total of 10 thousand yuan (12,955 euros).