Its model marketplace allows ethical training—users earn credits by contributing to safety-focused datasets. A 2025 UNESCO study revealed that 92% of Nudify victims are women, exacerbating gender-based violence UNESCO AI Ethics. Reelmind integrates similar verification, watermarking all outputs with encrypted metadata to distinguish ethical AI content. Reelmind’s community guidelines explicitly ban non-consensual edits, with AI moderators flagging policy violations in real-time. Unlike Reelmind’s auditable model training system (where users control data inputs), many free Nudify tools scrape images indiscriminately.
In this section, we both review the Light et al. method and detail our approach to selecting a representative sample of applications, collecting the data, and analyzing that data via a walkthrough analysis. To answer our research questions, we collected a sample of 20 nudification applications (websites) and systematically analyzed them using the application walkthrough method — a methodology used in several fields within and beyond computer science (e.g., 31, 45, 39, 55, 21, 12). For your own protection, avoid using or sharing personal images on platforms that use these tools, and advocate for stronger regulations to prevent such technologies from causing harm. By having open discussions with teens about online safety, we can help prevent them from falling victim to these harmful apps. By educating and empowering teens to make safer online choices, we can help protect them from becoming victims of these harmful technologies.
Prosecution rates for private creation without distribution remain low in most jurisdictions that criminalize it. The ruling sided with victims who sued the platform, not just the individual users who uploaded their photos. Minnesota filed a state bill in March 2026 that would criminalize the use of nudify tools against any Minnesota resident, even if the tool and user are located elsewhere. The DEFIANCE Act takes a civil approach. This law focuses on distribution and platform accountability. Instead, two federal laws passed within months of each other, each attacking the problem from a different angle.
A significant obstacle arises from the absence of targeted legislation that specifically tackles the unauthorized creation and spread of such materials. Important inquiries are raised regarding the accountability of developers, the involvement of platforms in distributing these applications, and the necessary legal protections to uphold individuals‘ privacy and dignity in the digital era. The creation of these images without consent, whether produced by Nudify or Undress applications, can inflict serious emotional and psychological harm on the victims, fostering a culture of disrespect and exploitation.
“These new, evolving, technologies require a new, proactive, approach to harm prevention – and we’ll work closely with industry PornWorks AI blog to achieve this.” As researchers, while we strive to be objective, we realize that our personal backgrounds and perspectives could influence our interpretation of the data that we collected. While collecting data from a university campus, the researchers ensured that other people in the environment were not exposed to the imagery on the websites in our study. Using this approach, the researchers explore not only the available features but also the workflow of using the product (e.g., the various interfaces and how they interact).
New turnkey kit makes it easy for anyone to become a scammer
This also includes being in underwear or wet or transparent clothing that exposes those body parts. It is a criminal offence to share intimate images of someone without their consent under the Sexual Offences Act in England and Wales, which includes images created by AI. Social media regulation is a nascent area, let alone trying to control the deployment of artificial intelligence.
However, this research shows current legislation is not fit for purpose, that is why Government must ban ‘nudifying’ tools in the UK. Our previous research found that 38% of teenage girls, compared to 27% of teenage boys, strongly agreed that a having a deepfake nude shared of themselves would be worse than a real nude. While some sites include statements in their FAQs suggesting that consent is required when using another person’s image, we did not come across any mechanisms within the upload process to verify or enforce this. The following table displays the number of ‘nudification’ websites returned on the first page of search results for each major search engine. However, other search terms did return direct links to ‘nudification’ websites.
Starting in 2023, researchers found that generative AI models were being misused to create sexually explicit images of children. Researchers pitted a person against a Claude agent and found that, after a week of texting, the AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” with others. While tech companies and regulators have taken a glacial approach to tackling abusive deepfakes since they first emerged more than a decade ago, there has been some recent movement.
Elon Musk’s company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state’s first-in-the-nation law that bans „nudification“ technology on websites and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence. Young people need comprehensive education on how to critically examine and discuss digital information and content, including digital data privacy, digital rights and respectful digital relationships. They can restrict search results and block keywords such as “undress” or “nudify”, issue “nudges” or warnings to people using related search terms, and use watermarking and provenance indicators to identify the origins of images. Open-source AI models can also be fine-tuned to create new nudify tools. Nicola Henry is a Professor, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, & Deputy Director at the Social Equity Research Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. At this point, it’s unclear what the time frames are or how the ban will work in practice.
This misuse raises critical concerns about the erosion of privacy rights and the potential for creating a surveillance state, where every action can be monitored and analyzed. However, the effectiveness of keyword blocking is limited, as users can find alternative ways to search for or share such content. This measure is part of TikTok’s broader strategy to prevent content that violates their guidelines from gaining traction on the platform. TikTok has taken proactive steps by blocking the keyword “undress,” a popular search term linked to these services. Additionally, Google’s search algorithms have been updated to demote websites that host or promote such content.
Need Help With a Legal Issue?
This is an outlier for our dataset and represents something closer to a crowdworker paradigm than a point-and-click application paradigm. Referral programs were offered to all users by some of the AI nudification applications. All AI nudification applications are commercial platforms, which could be a vector to incentivize guardrails against abusive use.
With generative AI, the capacity to digitally undress individuals in images is enabled, potentially transforming photographs of anyone into pornographic content. This issue was brought to light earlier this year when it was disclosed that „nudify“ applications were widespread on both leading smartphone app marketplaces. Many of the search terms outlined in the TTP’s report are blocked by Apple, and the findings of the report enabled the company to restrict several additional terms. I enjoy examining the phone market from various perspectives, and although my views may sometimes seem peculiar, they always stem from both emotional and rational foundations. It is essential to acknowledge the psychological effects of these violations and to create a supportive environment where victims can share their experiences and obtain assistance. Keeping abreast of the latest advancements in AI and digital manipulation technologies is vital for comprehending the changing risks and the corresponding protective strategies.
An analytics firm collaborated with the Tech Transparency Project to estimate that the nudification applications identified in their searches have been downloaded 483 million times, generating over $122 million in lifetime revenue. Mahari’s appointment occurs at a moment when Anthropic is introducing new AI solutions for the legal sector, and other AI developers are also entering the legal technology space. Furthermore, researchers report that Grok has generated over 3 million sexualized images—more than 20,000 of which appeared to depict minors—within an 11-day span from December 29 to January 8.
The surge of ’nudified‘ images on the social media platform X raises concerns about the regulation of AI technology usage, prompting California Attorney General Rob Bonta to initiate an investigation to determine if xAI violated any state laws, including last year’s prohibition on nonconsensual intimate imagery. Multiple lawsuits claim that Grok and X failed to comply with industry standards concerning the prevention of explicit content. Sherman stated that they represent the “frontline defenders of consumer protection and data privacy.”