How Apple and Google Make It Easy for Kids to Access Nudify Apps

An investigation by the Tech Transparency Project found that test accounts for 13-year-olds on Apple and Google app stores had access to 135 nudify apps, which collectively had been downloaded 5.5 billion times and generated 3.9 billion dollars in revenue. Apps with sexual content, including nudify apps, were frequently inaccurately rated as suitable for minors, allowing them to slip past age restrictions; even when Apple and Google removed nudify apps from their stores during the investigation, the apps remained functional on the teen test phones. The findings expose a systemic enforcement gap: app stores are failing to enforce their own policies and age restrictions as schools across the United States grapple with sexual deepfake scandals.

A Meta Business Partner and Startmate-backed AI platform, Guardii intercepts abuse before it reaches the target, blocking or flagging hostile contact including solicitation for nude imagery, threats involving synthetic or AI-generated material, and coercion escalating toward sextortion. Detection modules for grooming, sextortion, and child sexual abuse material operate across platforms in real time, identifying sustained targeting and escalation patterns in direct-message conversations on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, and Roblox, and enabling rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency without building a feed of what children said.