Apple and Google keep hosting nudify apps despite their own rules

Apple and Google continue to host apps in their mobile stores that let people create sexualized images of others without their consent. The problem is especially sensitive for the App Store and Google Play, because both companies already have rules that formally prohibit such content.

What the researchers found

The new wave of criticism stems from a report by the Tech Transparency Project. According to the report, so-called nudify apps are still available in the Apple and Google ecosystems. These services use generative AI to turn ordinary photos of people into sexualized images, without obtaining the consent of the person depicted.

The central contradiction is that this is not a gray area without rules. Both Apple and Google publicly restrict apps with sexually exploitative, harmful or misleading content. If such tools really do remain in search results and available for download, that points to a gap between the platforms' stated policy and how it works in practice. For companies that position their stores as a safe environment, this hurts both user trust and the reputation of the review system itself.

Why this is dangerous

Such apps lower the barrier to digital abuse to a few taps on a screen. Faking an image once took editing skills and time. Now it is enough to upload a photo from social media or a messenger, pick a style and get a result within minutes. For the victim, this is not a "joke" or a questionable entertainment format, but a violation of personal boundaries and of control over their own image.

The consequences of such tools are very real:

• bullying and humiliation in chats, schools and work teams
• blackmail and pressure in personal relationships
• reputational damage that is hard to fix quickly
• growing distrust of photos as evidence of reality
• extra load on platform moderation and on complaints from victims

Scale of distribution is a problem too. When such products pass the review of major app stores, they gain not only an audience but also an appearance of legitimacy. For some users, simply being in the App Store or Google Play signals that a service is "within the rules", even if its use cases are plainly toxic.

Why the rules failed

As the report describes it, the issue is no longer a lack of rules but their enforcement. App store moderation traditionally relies on the product description, keywords, screenshots, user complaints and later checks of updates. Developers of questionable services know how to game this system: they soften the wording, disguise the real use cases as "entertainment" or "photo effects", and make the riskiest features visible only after installation.

There is also a more systemic problem. Generative tools change faster than rules and manual review processes. Platforms have to assess not only the technology itself but also the likely harm from its use. With nudify apps, that harm is fairly obvious: the user scenario is built from the start around creating a sexualized image of a person without consent. That is why questions for Apple and Google will concern not only the policy on paper, but also how quickly they remove such products once discovered.

What this means

The nudify story shows that the main risk of generative AI today often lies not in the lab but at the distribution stage. If Apple and Google want their rules to be taken seriously, they will have to define prohibited scenarios more precisely, respond to complaints faster and scrutinize more strictly the apps that monetize non-consensual sexualization of people.