{"id":3753,"date":"2026-11-03T22:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T03:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3753"},"modified":"2026-11-03T22:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T03:10:42","slug":"apple-bans-nudify-apps-a-massive-victory-for-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3753","title":{"rendered":"Apple Bans \u201cNudify\u201d Apps, A Massive Victory for Survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UltraViolet, a leading national women-led gender-justice organization responsible for numerous impactful victories against sexual predators and tech-facilitated sexual violence, issued the following statement in response to Apple updating its developer guidelines<\/u><\/a> to ban AI \u201cnudify\u201d apps on its App Store, calling on Google to make the same changes in its Play Store immediately. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis victory belongs to the courageous survivors of dangerous \u2018nudify\u2019 apps\u2014especially children\u2014and the advocates who demanded accountability. Apple\u2019s new CEO, John Ternus, now has an opportunity to usher in a new era of leadership that puts the safety of women and children first,\u201d said<\/strong> Jenna Sherman, Campaign Director at UltraViolet. <\/strong>\u201cApple’s decision is an important step forward, and Google must follow suit immediately. But one policy change is not enough. Big Tech must do more to stop enabling and profiting from the creation and spread of AI-facilitated sexual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apple quietly made the change over the weekend amid public outcry and UltraViolet\u2019s years-long Reclaim the Domain<\/u><\/a> pressure campaign demanding that the company, alongside Google, stop the proliferation of non-consensual sexual content on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, respectively. <\/p>\n

In January, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI chatbot Grok fueled a wave of nonconsensual sexual deepfake abuse on X, generating an estimated 3 million sexualized images in just 11 days, including approximately 23,000 depicting children, according to research<\/u><\/a>. In response, UltraViolet delivered a sign-on letter to Apple and Google endorsed by 28 organizations calling<\/u><\/a> on the companies to remove Grok, X, and all \u201cnudify\u201d apps from their respective marketplaces. <\/p>\n

After the companies failed to act, UltraViolet escalated its campaign in May, bringing together more than 50 civil society organizations to send an open letter<\/u><\/a> calling on state Attorneys General (AGs) to take direct legal action against Apple and Google for hosting \u201cnudify\u201d apps in their app stores. In June, UltraViolet and child safety organization Heat Initiative<\/u><\/a> took the campaign directly to Apple’s doorstep, co-hosting a demonstration<\/u><\/a> at Apple Park during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), calling on new CEO John Ternus to change course from the past inaction on \u201cnudify\u201d apps which defined Tim Cook\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as we pressured Apple into making these changes, we\u2019ll continue fighting until Google does the same and our other demands are met,\u201d continued Sherman<\/strong>. \u201cThe two companies still refuse to 1) remove Grok and X from their app stores, since Grok is a major source of mass-produced sexual deepfakes targeting women and children, 2) add a sexual violence hotline at the top of searches for \u2018deepfake porn,\u2019 while abusive sexualized deepfakes can still be found all over Google search and tutorials on how to make deepfakes with tools available on the Google Play Store and Apple Store remain monetized, and 3) remove all known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from iCloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a 2023 report<\/u><\/a>, an estimated 98 percent of deepfake videos found online were sexually explicit, and 99 percent of those targeted in sexual deepfakes were women. UltraViolet believes the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, including hyperscale data centers, is helping fuel this epidemic of digital abuse. That growing threat has mobilized tens of thousands of people to join UltraViolet\u2019s Reclaim the Domain<\/u><\/a> campaign. UltraViolet\u2019s petition<\/u><\/a> calling on Apple and Google to remove \u201cnudify\u201d apps from their app stores garnered more than 55,000 signatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis win is proof that the tides are turning against these Big Tech companies, and against the \u2018forced inevitability\u2019 of AI that hurts all American people, particularly women and children. Today we celebrate this win, absolutely, but we see it as the start of a domino chain, built on the bravery of survivors, to bring down the entirety of this abusive ecosystem of sexual deepfake abuse. We are living in the greatest mass sexual abuse crisis of our time, and companies like Apple and Google have been getting rich off of it. Tech companies must for once change their tune and put people over profit\u2014especially Google, which has no excuse to implement the same app store ban as Apple. The physical and mental well-being of every woman and child depends on it,\u201d concluded Sherman<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s new restrictions mark the latest in a series of tech accountability victories that UltraViolet has helped secure. Recent UltraViolet wins include pressuring Google to block searches<\/u><\/a> for \u201cnudify\u201d apps, downrank<\/u><\/a> websites dedicated to platforming deepfake abuse, and to stop accepting advertising money from these apps; pushing<\/u><\/a> crucial federal legislation like the DEFIANCE Act forward; and helping<\/u><\/a> spur legal action from state lawmakers and AGs against Apple and Google for enabling AI-generated CSAM. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UltraViolet, a leading national women-led gender-justice organization responsible for numerous impactful victories against sexual predators and tech-facilitated sexual violence, issued the following statement in response to Apple updating its developer guidelines to ban AI \u201cnudify\u201d apps on its App Store, calling on Google to make the same changes in its Play Store immediately. \u201cThis victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}