Report finds 135 'nudify' apps downloadable from 13-year-old Apple and Google accounts

The findings follow an episode in Pennsylvania in December 2025, when Morgan Dorfman learned that a student at her daughter's high school had used an AI image-editing app called Movely to make sexual videos from photographs of her daughter and five other girls. Dorfman, a mother of four, said she had known what a deepfake was but had assumed the technique was used against celebrities. "I didn't know it was possible to take any picture or any screenshot of anybody that you have and do this," she said. She said the girls were "very scared and confused about what to do next".

Dorfman spent weeks working out how the app functioned and assembling material to warn other parents. She downloaded Movely and was immediately prompted to make suggestive videos from any image. According to a demonstration she prepared for parents that the Guardian reviewed, the free version promoted templates labelled "clothes explosion", "brassiere unfasten" and "underwear drop". In the paid version the options became explicit, and she saw templates matching the kinds of pornographic scenes a classmate said her daughter had appeared in.

For the report, TTP researchers set up four test accounts, two on Apple and two on Google, registered as belonging to 13-year-olds. Searching terms including "AI video generator" and "adult AI", they downloaded 135 apps with features that removed clothing or swapped faces onto nude bodies. In their tests the researchers used AI-generated images of women rather than photographs of real people.

Both companies bar such apps from their stores and often apply age gates to adult content, restricting or blocking minors. TTP found, however, that the platforms largely leave it to developers to decide whether an app suits a given age group. "Many nudify apps identified in the investigation were inaccurately rated as suitable for minors – meaning the teen users could access them even when parental controls were activated," the report said. One face-swapping app, advertised to the researchers with an image of a woman performing oral sex, carried a rating of suitable for ages four and up. Its free version prompted users to place real women's faces onto templates of women in lingerie, with pornographic scenarios offered on payment. The researchers bought a subscription from a 13-year-old's account without any alert reaching a linked parental account.

Governments in several countries have moved to ban such AI platforms from app stores, and most US states have laws criminalising possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The apps continue to multiply regardless, the report found.

Google said it regularly takes "proactive steps to detect and remove apps with harmful content". Company spokesperson Dan Jackson said: "When violations are detected or reported to us, we investigate and take swift action, which in this case included suspending violating apps and restricting related search terms on our store."

Apple said that after TTP approached it for comment it strengthened its content moderation guidelines and now requires developers to preemptively prevent and remove nonconsensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated images. The company said it reviews every app before publication and removes apps and developers that misrepresent features, and that beyond apps already taken down it has "taken action" on the remaining apps named in the report. Apple spokesperson Adam Dema said: "A number of the apps in this report are mainstream photo and video editing tools with legitimate, widely used functionality, and do not have nudification or deepfake capabilities. We prohibit nudify apps on the App Store, and remove developers who add capabilities like it after the App Review process."

Editor's Summary

A Tech Transparency Project report found that accounts registered to 13-year-olds could download 135 apps capable of removing clothing or swapping faces onto nude bodies from Apple's and Google's stores, in many cases because developers had rated them as suitable for minors. The findings follow a Pennsylvania case in which a student used the app Movely to generate sexual videos from photographs of classmates. Apple said it tightened its moderation rules after being contacted; Google said it suspended violating apps and restricted related search terms.