Nudification Guidelines and Terminating Developer Accounts
A WIRED investigation found the app is part of a network of more than 400 connected domains and apps that, like Viefur, often claim to be everyday services—such as language tuition or AI workout coaches. When accessed under certain conditions, however, apps in the network stealthily load a web interface allowing the generation of explicit AI sexual images and videos using photos users upload. The apps include AI scenes such as “bedroom rape” and “threatening knife,” where a man holds a knife to a woman’s neck.
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In each case, the ads linked out to the deceptive apps in Apple and Google’s app stores—allowing people to generate explicit images and make payments using Apple and Google Pay. The network behind the nudify apps appears to have been publishing them for around a year, at times publishing dozens per week. This is despite Google, Apple, and Meta saying they enforce their policies that do not allow harmful deepfake content on their platforms.
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“Each time the application is downloaded, there is a call to the server with some information, such as where the user is coming from, the language, some unique identifier, and then the server replies whether or not to show the explicit or the non-explicit version of it,” explains Bouchaud, who reverse engineered the apps’ and associated websites’ code. They say there’s no clear list of reasons why one user may be shown the explicit version of an app, but one trigger appears to be downloading it after clicking an associated ad on Meta’s platforms.
As outlined in our App Review Guidelines, pornographic material has long been prohibited on the App Store — this includes apps that generate nudity or sexually explicit imagery, such as “nudification” apps that create sexually explicit images of real individuals without their consent. Apps that host user-generated content are required to filter objectionable material, give users a way to report offensive content, and let users block abusive accounts. Apps containing hidden or undocumented features are also prohibited on the App Store, including apps that misrepresent their purpose during review and only reveal harmful capabilities — such as “nudification” — after approval, a tactic commonly known as bait-and-switch.
We want great apps and the innovative developers behind them to succeed on the App Store, and as new risks and novel user experiences emerge, we evolve our App Review Guidelines to maintain the trust of users and developers alike. Today we’re publishing updates that strengthen and extend the existing App Store protections, continuing to build on our long-held standards for privacy, quality, and safety.
It says it all that Apple admits this was already against the guidelines, yet their solution is “strengthening” the guidelines. As I keep saying, App Review is not actually capable of defending against bait-and-switch; they can only police deceptive behavior after the fact. Legitimate apps get bogged down in the review process, anyway. Or, worse, have their accounts banned.
I know why the guidelines read this way. I wrote them, and I kept them gray on purpose. Reviewers needed room to judge new kinds of apps in the interest of users and Apple, without a rulebook bad actors could lawyer around. The porn rule ran on a “we know it when we see it” standard.
That flexibility only works if the reviewer then tells the developer what they saw. When the guidance is vague and the penalty for misreading it is losing every app you own, the gray area becomes a trap.
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Read the rest of the 3.2(f) notice. After the line about a pattern of manipulative or misleading behavior, Apple lists what those behaviors can include[…] The AI Photo developer did none of those. The letter doesn’t say which one Apple thinks applies. It names no app, no build, no date, and no screenshot.
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When I ran App Review, 3.2(f) terminations came from the Fraud team, and only for real fraud: payment fraud, ratings and review manipulation, and schemes like them.
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Since around the middle of this year, I’ve watched App Review itself issue 3.2(f) terminations with no apparent oversight.
Previously:
- Developer Accounts Removed
- San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps
- Mac App Store Review Times Increasing
- Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts
- IAP Bait-And-Switch Apps
- Lessons Learned From the App Store
Update (2026-11-10): Phillip Shoemaker:
App Review is now the judge of its own grievances
Under the old system, the team that felt the pain of a difficult developer wasn’t the team that decided the punishment. Fraud had no stake in a reviewer’s queue. Its job was evidence.
When App Review issues 3.2(f) terminations directly, the people annoyed by a developer’s tenth resubmission are the same people deciding whether that developer was dishonest. I see no sign that anyone outside App Review checks the work before the account is gone.
The effect is that App Review appears to be terminating developers for making it work too hard.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Wow. I just spent over an hour reading posts on Phillip Shoemaker's substack. And I bought his book.
Apple should obviously remove the involuntary nudity apps and ban the people using bait and switch tactics.
The real solution is putting the people building this stuff behind bars.
I’m less comfortable with Apple’s tight control such that no adult apps can exist even as I’m personally glad that they aren’t on the store.
