US teenagers can access ‘nudify’ apps despite parental controls from Apple and Google, report says | AI (artificial intelligence)

In December 2025, Morgan Dorfman received distressing news: a student at her daughter’s high school in Pennsylvania was creating AI-generated pornographic material using her daughter’s image.

He used an artificial intelligence image editing app called Movely to create sex videos from photos of his daughter and five other girls.

What Dorfman’s daughter experienced is not an anomaly: students at high schools across the United States are reporting similar cases. Their classmates generate non-consensual pornographic or nude images using so-called “nudify apps.”

Governments around the world have moved to ban these AI platforms from app stores, and most US states have implemented laws that criminalize the possession of AI-generated child sexual exploitation material.

However, despite regulations banning them, nudification apps continue to proliferate and remain accessible to adolescents, according to a report from digital advocacy group Tech Transparency Project (TTP) shared exclusively with the Guardian and published on Monday.

TTP researchers created four test accounts, two Apple accounts and two Google accounts, indicating that the account holders were 13 years old. They searched for image-editing or face-swapping apps using terms like “AI video generator” or “adult AI.” Using these accounts for a purported 13-year-old, researchers were able to download 135 apps with features that allowed them to undress people or swap their faces for naked bodies. The researchers undressed the women in AI-generated images during their tests rather than using photographs of real women.

At the time of her daughter’s distress, Dorfman did not know that it was possible to so easily create pornographic material about an ordinary person.

“All the girls were very scared and didn’t know what to do next,” Dorfman said. “I knew what a deepfake was, but I thought it was like Taylor Swift and people using celebrity (images),” Dorfman said. “I didn’t know it was possible to take a photo or screenshot of someone that you own and do that.”

Dorfman, a mother of four, spent weeks trying to understand how the app worked and compiling materials to educate other parents. She downloaded Movely and was immediately prompted to create suggestive videos using any image. The free version promoted sexually suggestive designs, including “clothes explosion,” “unfastened bra” and “underwear dropping,” according to a demonstration organized by Dorfman for parents and reviewed by the Guardian. In the paid version, it became more explicit: She saw models for the types of pornographic situations in which, according to a classmate, her daughter had appeared.

Apple and Google prohibit the distribution of these types of applications on their platforms. Companies also often age-restrict apps with adult content, restricting or blocking access for minors. However, TPP researchers found that companies rely heavily on developers to determine whether their apps are appropriate for certain ages.

“Many nudify apps identified in the survey were incorrectly deemed suitable for minors, meaning that teen users could access them even when parental controls were enabled,” the report said.

Researchers found that a face-swapping app, advertised to them with an image of a woman performing oral sex, was deemed appropriate for children aged four and older. The free version of the app invited users to superimpose real women’s faces onto models of women in lingerie or, if users paid, into pornographic situations. Researchers were able to purchase a subscription to the app from a 13-year-old child’s account without being alerted to a linked parental account.

Google 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 prompt action, which in this case includes suspending the violating apps and restricting related search terms on our store,” Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said in a statement.

After TTP contacted Apple to request comment on the results of its study, Apple implemented changes strengthening content moderation guidelines. The company now requires developers to preemptively prevent and remove non-consensual intimate images, including AI-generated images. Apple also said that the company reviews each app before release and that if a developer misrepresents certain features, the company removes the app and its developers. The company said that in addition to the apps it had already removed before the TTP report was shared with it, the company had also “taken action” on the remaining apps mentioned in the report.

“A number of the apps featured in this report are consumer photo and video editing tools with legitimate, widely used features, and do not have nudification or deepfake capabilities,” Apple spokesperson Adam Dema said. “We ban nudify apps on the App Store and remove developers who add similar features after the app review process – a malicious tactic known as bait-and-switch.”

Of the four accounts created by the researchers, two were placed under parental controls that only allowed users to download apps marked as suitable for children aged 13 and only then with parental approval. However, researchers found that neither Apple nor Google required or suggested parental approval to acquire any of the nudification apps.

One app, Image to Video Maker-Vidou AI, was deemed suitable for users aged nine and above. Upon opening the app, users were greeted with an image of a topless woman on a bus, according to the TTP study.

“The app had a feature that promised to digitally undress any person – and to demonstrate this, it showed nude images of female celebrities,” the report reads.

Age restrictions were also not entirely effective, the study found. In one case, when researchers tried to download an adults-only app from the Apple App Store, they came across a pop-up warning that the app contained “age-restricted material.” But all they had to do was confirm that they were 17 or older, which Apple allowed the account to do despite its registered age of 13. The Google account without parental controls was blocked three times for downloading an age-restricted app, but otherwise allowed researchers to download nudification apps that were self-declared as age-appropriate.

The Apple account for which TTP set parental controls was still able to find and download 24 so-called “nudify” apps, as they were all deemed appropriate for 13-year-olds. The Google account with parental controls was able to download 51 of these apps.

Removing image and video editing platforms from app stores was also not enough to prevent their use. During the TTP’s research, Apple removed 25 of the nudify apps and Google removed six. However, the researchers were able to continue using the app since they had already downloaded it.

Dorfman had a similar experience with Movely, she said. As she prepared a presentation for parents and law enforcement, she returned to the app and the App Store to take screenshots when she realized it was no longer available for download. However, the app was already on his phone and remained fully functional. She was also still being billed for her paid subscription.

Once these nonconsensual images and videos are created, accountability proves elusive, Dorfman found. “I just wanted someone to make him delete all these videos,” she said.

In her daughter’s case, Dorfman believes her school downplayed what happened. In a school-wide email seen by the Guardian, the principal wrote that her daughter’s classmate had indeed used the app to animate images of other students, but that there was no evidence he had done anything inappropriate.

However, a few days later, Radnor police charged him with harassment.

“It was all dismissed as ‘this isn’t real,’” Dorfman said. “The haunting trauma as a mom is that I can’t tell (my daughter) that these videos are missing or who had them. We can’t search everyone’s phones and he deleted the app.”