Apple and Google controls let teens download nude-image apps

How the safeguards failed

TTP created two Apple accounts and two Google accounts, all set to age 13. Two had parental controls enabled, allowing downloads only for apps rated suitable for 13-year-olds and requiring parental approval. Researchers found that neither platform required or even offered a parent’s consent before downloads of apps that could generate nude images.

Some apps carried ratings that made their content especially easy to miss. One face-swapping app was rated for users four and older, despite advertising with an image of a woman performing oral sex. Another, Image to Video Maker-Vidou AI, was rated for ages nine and up and opened to an image of a woman with bare breasts on a bus.

Age checks also proved easy to bypass. When researchers tried to download an adult app from the App Store, Apple displayed a warning but let them proceed after they confirmed they were 17—even though the account was set to 13. A Google account without parental controls failed to download an adult app three times; researchers nevertheless downloaded other nude-image apps whose developers had rated them as age-appropriate.

The companies responded after TTP’s investigation. Google said it routinely looks for and removes harmful apps. Spokesperson Dan Jackson said Google reviewed the apps in this case, blocked those that violated its rules and restricted related search queries in the store.

Apple changed its review rules after TTP requested comment. Developers must now take steps to prevent the distribution of intimate images without consent and remove such material, including AI-generated images. Apple said it reviews every app before publication and removes apps or developer accounts when features are misrepresented. Spokesperson Adam Dema said some apps cited in the report were legitimate photo and video editors without undressing or deepfake capabilities, and described adding those features after approval as a form of evasion.

Removal does not undo a download

During the investigation, Apple removed 25 photo and video apps and Google removed six. But apps already installed continued to work. Morgan Dorfman found that out when she returned to Movely, the editing app used to make sexual videos from images of her daughter and five other girls at a Pennsylvania high school. The app was no longer available to download, but it remained on her phone—and she was still being charged for its subscription.

‘We prohibit nudify apps on the App Store, and remove developers who add capabilities like it after the App Review process’, an apple spokesperson said. Photograph: Lee Hudson/Alamy

Source: theguardian.com

Dorfman learned of the incident in December 2025. She said the girls were frightened and confused, and that she had not realized how easily an ordinary photo or screenshot could be turned into pornography. Movely offered templates such as “clothing explosion,” “unbuttoning the bra” and “removing underwear” in its free version; its paid version included more explicit scenarios.

The school’s principal later wrote to parents that a student had used an app to animate images of other students, but that there was no evidence of inappropriate conduct. A few days later, Radnor police charged him with harassment. Dorfman said the incident was dismissed because the images were “not real.” She still could not tell her daughter that the videos had been deleted or find out who might have them.

My read is that the report exposes a gap between removing an app and undoing its effects. Apple’s rule change addresses what developers must do, but the account findings show how much the existing system depended on developers’ own ratings. And even when a store takes an app down, the images may already have been made, copied or left on a child’s phone. That is the problem a storefront can make harder to start—but cannot solve by delisting alone.