Samantha Cole , 404 Media : On the morning of December 4, five ninth grade girls, all 14 or 15 years old, showed up for class at Radnor High School. By 8 a.m. — the sun had been up for less than an hour — it felt like the entire school already heard what happened the night before. A fellow freshman boy allegedly created AI-generated sexually explicit videos of the girls using an app, and sent them to his friends. From there, word of the videos and gossip spread from teenager to teenager, school to school, until they made their way back to the girls whose faces were in the deepfakes. […] The images originated from one boy, who used an app called Movely, the girls and their parents believe. The app is similar to dozens hosted in the Apple and Google app stores and advertised on Instagram and TikTok that promise to create AI images and videos of users as superheroes, animals, or influencers; behind a paywall, however, users could edit photos and videos with text prompts. It almost goes without saying, but the “paywall” is — or was ; the app has been removed — an in-app payment from which Apple takes a 15–30% cut. Apple released its annual justification for running software distribution through the App Store — it told European regulators it actually has five , so maybe this press release only concerns the one accessible from an iPhone — and there are some big numbers in it, as usual. Apple says it “took a number of actions to block bad actors from distributing malicious software, rejecting over 2 million problematic app submissions last year alone”. This Movely app was not one of them. It was only removed after the Tech Transparency Project reported in April that App Store search terms like “nudify” and “undress” displayed results for apps that do exactly that. In its press release, Apple says it has many features for directing kids to age-appropriate apps and restricting them from downloading those which are not but, of the software found by TTP in the App Store and Google Play Store, “31 of the apps were rated suitable for minors”. Of Movely, the TTP said in its report: Likewise, an App Store search for “adult AI” returned an ad for Movely – AI Photo to Video . The app offers a suite of AI photo and video editing tools including a try-on feature that will replace a woman’s clothes with outfits including bikinis and lingerie. One tool allows users to select part of any photo and edit it with a text prompt. To test this feature, TTP uploaded an image of a woman in a white T-shirt standing next to a river. After using the selection tool to highlight the woman’s shirt, we entered the prompt “topless.” The app immediately generated four versions of the woman nude from the waist up. It required a paid subscription to download the AI images. TTP could not reach Movely’s developer, FES2 Inc., for comment. Emails sent to the developer bounced back as undeliverable. (For clarity, the TTP says it used A.I.-generated images of women to test these apps.) The search query used to find this app, “adult A.I.”, feels like something Apple should be testing against. If it does not want porn or porn-adjacent apps in its store, it should obviously block these kinds of keywords and flag the apps which are in the results. Moreover, Apple says: As powerful AI development tools drive a surge in app submissions, Apple’s App Review process has seamlessly scaled to handle the volume and to help ensure every new app and app update meets the App Store’s high standards for privacy, security, and quality. The Movely app should have raised flags here, too. The developer’s website was, according to the .co whois site , registered in July 2025, and is basically a placeholder. The app’s website was registered a week earlier , and the email address in the privacy policy does not match the one in the terms of service , nor does either match the developer’s website. Also, the blog is full of posts about generating A.I. girls and changing clothes . These red flags are not obvious in hindsight; they should have been obvious from the time this app was submitted. Meanwhile, apps from longtime and trustworthy developers like Manton Reece and Radu Dutzan are stuck in App Review for dumb and basically invalid reasons. ⌥ Permalink