Deepfake AI Apps: Pet Editors Hid Sexual Face Swap Tools

Deepfake AI Apps: Pet Editors Hid Sexual Face Swap Tools

Full Episode Transcript

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Someone downloads a free app to put funny hats on their dog.

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Months later, that same app, on someone else's

Months later, that same app, on someone else's phone, was a tool for making sexual deepfakes.

Same app. Same store listing. Nothing in the download looked different.

If you've ever installed a free app and handed it access to your photos, this story is about you.

Most of us do it without a second thought.

It's unsettling to learn that a harmless-looking permission can sit inside something built for abuse.

WIRED reported that more than four hundred connected apps and web domains hid abusive deepfake features.

They disguised themselves as pet photo editors and workout coaches.

Together, they were downloaded more than three hundred and fifty thousand times.

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Many carried ratings suitable for all ages

Many carried ratings suitable for all ages.

So how does an app like that get past the people whose whole job is checking?

Start with how the apps worked.

Reviewers at Apple and Google test an app before it goes on sale.

But these apps pulled some of their content from outside servers.

A server check could quietly switch on the hidden tools.

Someone who downloaded the app normally might see only pet filters.

Someone who arrived through a particular advertisement could unlock something else.

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That's deliberate design

That's deliberate design.

The reviewer sees a clean app on day one.

Nobody sees what it delivers on day one hundred and eighty.

The app store approves a snapshot, but the app keeps changing.

For a person at home, that means a rating on a store page isn't a promise about what the app does next month.

According to WIRED, tens of thousands of explicit deepfake ads tied to this network ran on Meta's platforms since the start of the year.

So the apps weren't just hiding in stores.

They were being promoted on one of the largest social platforms in the world.

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Ads brought in the people who wanted the hidden

Ads brought in the people who wanted the hidden tools, while everyone else saw a dog-photo app.

Then there's the timeline.

Some of these apps had been available for about a year.

Google had removed most of the ones identified before WIRED even contacted the company.

Apple pulled nineteen apps after WIRED shared its findings.

Registration records show the apps began appearing in late twenty twenty-five.

Their numbers rose sharply by spring.

That's not one bad actor getting caught. That's a network that kept growing.

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The harm lands on specific people

And the harm lands on specific people.

According to research cited in the reporting, about ninety-nine percent of sexual deepfakes show women.

Industry estimates put the number of these videos online at about five hundred thousand in twenty twenty-three.

By twenty twenty-five, that estimate had climbed to around eight million.

Most of them target women and girls.

Behind every one of those videos is a real person who never agreed to it.

Apple did update its App Review Guidelines on October sixteenth.

The new rules address A.I.-generated intimate images made without consent, and hidden features.

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