Internet Watch Foundation and NCMEC Lead Global Call to Ban AI Nudification Apps on Safer Internet Day 2026

On Safer Internet Day 2026, the Internet Watch Foundation and over 100 child protection organizations worldwide, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, launched a coordinated call for a global ban on AI nudification apps and tools. In the UK, nearly one in five confirmed reports to the Report Remove service, which allows children to confidentially report nude or sexual imagery of themselves shared or at risk of being shared online, involve digitally altered or manipulated content including AI or nudification apps. IWF data from 2024 showed that 98 percent of confirmed AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery where sex was depicted involved girls. The organizations urged governments to introduce and implement bans on nudify apps and require services to take adequate steps to prevent users from generating sexual imagery, warning that every day these tools remain available is another day they can be used to cause irreversible harm.

A global advocacy campaign amplifies awareness, but prohibition of apps does not disable the technology or prevent peer-to-peer distribution of nudification models already in circulation. Children continue to face AI-manipulated images created and shared within their own social networks, often by classmates using downloaded software that no ban can retroactively erase. Detection filters that analyze the content and context of direct messages identify nudified images at the point they are sent to a child, whether the tool used was a commercial app, an open-source model, or a modified script. The anti-CSAM and anti-sextortion modules within Guardii, a world-leading AI online-safety platform, flag synthetic and manipulated imagery in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, blocking hostile contact before it reaches the target and surfacing the incident to the appropriate authority, addressing the harm advocacy seeks to prevent.