WIRED Finds Pet Portrait and Workout Apps Hid Deepfake Tools and Apple Says They Passed Review

A pet portrait app that turns your hamster into a man in beach shorts sounds like the most harmless thing on a phone. According to a WIRED investigation, it was also cover for something else entirely: a tool for making sexually abusive deepfakes from photos of real people.

WIRED reports that the app belongs to a network of more than 400 connected apps and web domains. Many posed as everyday services, including language lessons and AI workout coaches. Under certain conditions, WIRED found, they quietly loaded a web interface for generating explicit images and video. I won't describe the templates.

The detail worth your attention is not the content. It is the trick.

Paul Bouchaud, a lead researcher at the nonprofit AI Forensics who reverse engineered the apps, told WIRED that each download triggers a call to a server. That call passes along details such as where the user came from, their language and a unique identifier. The server then replies with the clean version or the hidden one. One apparent trigger, per WIRED, was installing the app after clicking an associated ad on Facebook or Instagram.

"This is an organized, commercially run operation: One operator behind hundreds of disposable apps and domains, cloaked to pass App Store review and pushed through tens of thousands of Meta ads under fake payer names." Paul Bouchaud, AI Forensics, speaking to WIRED

A reviewer testing the app sees a pet filter. A person who arrived through a particular ad sees something else.

Three platforms, three statements, one year

Apple, Google and Meta all say they prohibit this material. WIRED says the network appears to have been publishing apps for around a year, at times dozens per week. Bouchaud told WIRED that about 30 nudify app sites were being registered weekly at one point, and that 27 were live on Google Play in September with more than 350,000 downloads combined.

Apple removed 19 apps after WIRED got in touch. Spokesperson Adam Dema said the apps complied with the rules when reviewed, and that developers later changed the website each app pulls from.

"We review every app before it is published, and these apps complied with our rules when we reviewed them." Adam Dema, Apple spokesperson, speaking to WIRED

That is a fair description of the problem and a weak defence of the outcome. If an app can swap its content from a server after approval, a clean review tells you very little about what ships to users. AppleInsider notes Apple tightened its guidelines on October 16. Rules are not detection, and detection is the hard bit.

Google did not respond to WIRED, though it had removed most of the apps before being contacted.

Meta says it banned the Hong Kong-registered company that WIRED links to the network from advertising in 2025, after the company failed to comply with a cease and desist letter. Once WIRED supplied the domains, Meta says, it acted against 11,600 ad accounts, more than 4,700 business pages, 5,200 users and 15,000 pages, and blocked 209 apps from advertising.

That is a serious response once Meta was handed a list. It also shows how much was running before anyone handed one over. WIRED says similar ads and apps were still being published as it finished reporting.

The operator has not answered. WIRED says the apps and domains appear to be run by Chinese-language developers and the Hong Kong entity, based on its review of domains and code. Emails to linked addresses got no reply. Those are WIRED's findings, not established facts about who controls the network.

For ordinary people the practical lessons are plain. Be wary of AI photo apps that sell coins or credits for transformations, especially if you found them through an ad. Do not upload photos of other people, and never of children. Treat an all-ages rating as a label, not a guarantee.