One app advertised with explicit imagery rated for ages four and up
A Tech Transparency Project investigation, the digital advocacy group said in a report released Monday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, used four test accounts registered as 13-year-olds to probe how widely nudification apps remain available through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Researchers downloaded 135 apps with features enabling them to strip people of their clothes or swap their faces onto nude bodies, the report found, despite both platforms stating they prohibit such apps.
TTP researchers configured four accounts — two Apple accounts and two Google accounts — as belonging to a 13-year-old user. They searched for image-editing and face-swapping apps using terms such as “AI video generator” and “adult AI.” The researchers disrobed women in AI-generated images in their tests rather than using photographs of real women, the report said.
Two apps were rated as appropriate for very young children. One face-swapping app, advertised to researchers with an image of a woman performing oral sex, was rated appropriate for ages four and up. The free version of the app prompted users to superimpose real women’s faces onto templates of women in lingerie or, if users paid, in pornographic situations. Researchers were able to buy a subscription to that app from a 13-year-old’s account without an alert to a linked parental account, according to the report.
Another app, called Image to Video Maker-Vidou AI, was rated appropriate for users aged nine and older. Upon opening, users were greeted by an image of a topless woman on a bus, according to the study. “The app had a feature that promised to digitally undress any person — and to demonstrate, it showed nude images of female celebrities,” the report read.
Parental controls failed to block the downloads on either store. Two of the four accounts — one Apple and one Google — were placed under parental controls that only allowed users to download apps marked suitable for 13-year-olds and only then with a parental signoff. However, the researchers found that neither Apple nor Google required or suggested parental signoff to acquire any of the nudification apps. The Apple account with parental controls activated was able to find and download 24 “nudify” apps because they were all rated as appropriate for 13-year-olds. The Google account with parental controls downloaded 51 such apps.
When researchers tried to download an adult-rated app from the Apple App Store, they encountered a pop-up warning about “age-restricted material” but bypassed it by self-confirming they were 17 or older, which Apple allowed the account to do despite its registered age being 13. The Google account without parental controls was blocked three times from downloading an age-restricted app but otherwise allowed the researchers to download nudification apps self-reported as age-appropriate.
“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.
The pattern extends beyond the test accounts. In December 2025, Morgan Dorfman was told that a student at her daughter’s Pennsylvania high school had used an artificial intelligence image-editing app called Movely to create sexual videos from pictures of her daughter and five other girls. What Dorfman’s daughter experienced is not an anomaly: students in high schools across the US are reporting similar cases, with classmates generating nonconsensual pornographic or nude imagery using so-called “nudify apps,” according to the Guardian.
“All the girls were very scared and confused about what to do next,” Dorfman said. “I knew what a deepfake was, but I thought it was like Taylor Swift and people using celebrities’ [images],” Dorfman said. “I didn’t know it was possible to take any picture or any screenshot of anybody that you have and do this.”
Dorfman, a mother of four, said she spent weeks trying to figure out how the app worked and compiling material to educate other parents. She downloaded Movely and was immediately prompted to create suggestive videos using any image. The free version of Movely promoted sexually suggestive templates including “clothes explosion,” “brassiere unfasten,” and “underwear drop,” according to a demonstration Dorfman put together for parents that the Guardian reviewed. In the paid version, the templates became more explicit, matching the situations in which, according to a classmate, Dorfman’s daughter had appeared.
Both Apple and Google said they prohibit nudify apps on their platforms and often age-gate apps with adult content, but the report found the companies largely rely on developers to determine whether their apps are appropriate for certain ages.
Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said the company regularly takes “proactive steps to detect and remove apps with harmful content.” “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,” Jackson said.
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.” Dema said Apple prohibits nudify apps on the App Store and removes developers who add such capabilities after the App Review process — “a malicious tactic known as bait-and-switch.”
After TTP contacted Apple seeking comment on the findings, the company implemented changes requiring developers to preemptively prevent and remove nonconsensual intimate imagery including AI-generated images. Apple also said it reviews every app before it is published and removes apps whose developers misrepresent features. In addition to apps Apple removed before the TTP report was shared with the company, Apple said it had “taken action” on the remaining apps mentioned in the report.
Removing the apps from stores did not stop their use. During TTP’s research, Apple took down 25 of the nudify apps and Google took down six. Researchers could continue using the apps they had already downloaded. Dorfman had a similar experience with Movely: when she returned to the App Store to take screenshots for a parent-education presentation, she found the app was no longer available for download, but it remained fully functional on her phone, and she was still being charged for her paid subscription.
Most US states have implemented laws criminalizing possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, and governments around the world have moved to ban nudify apps from app stores, according to the Guardian. Once nonconsensual images and videos are created, accountability proves evasive, Dorfman has found. “I just wanted someone to make him delete all of these videos,” she said.
In Dorfman’s case, the principal of her daughter’s school sent a school-wide email stating that the classmate had used the app to animate images of other students but that there was no evidence he had done anything inappropriate. Days later, Radnor police criminally charged the classmate with harassment.
“The whole thing was dismissed as ‘it’s not real,’” Dorfman said. The “haunting trauma as a mom,” she added, is that “I can’t tell [my daughter] those videos are gone or who had them. We can’t search everyone’s phones, and he deleted the app.”