Deepfake nudes are flooding social media. Here's what's being done about it

Scola said that more recently, she has become the focus of online abuse and has to preserve evidence of doxxing, sexual imagery and threats against herself.

Since her time as a moderator, the internet has, some argue, become an even darker place.

"Previously, much of the harmful material I reviewed had been photographed, recorded or livestreamed by a person," Scola explained. "Generative AI now enables users to manufacture non-consensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material, including from ordinary photographs, and produce variations at scale."

The rise of "nudify" apps and AI-generative software has transformed how nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material are created, distributed and removed online, and experts are sounding the alarm on the deepfake nude crisis.

An analysis by Wired and Indicator found that nearly 90 schools and 600 students worldwide were affected by AI-generated nudes between 2023 and April 2026. Research from the child protection group Thorn found that 1 in 8 teens personally know someone who has been targeted by fake nudes, and 1 in 17 said they had been a victim themselves.

Fingers have been pointed at parents, at the schools that failed to act on complaints, and at the teens who created such images of their classmates. Victims have spoken about the social and psychological impact of these images and what happens when they spread.

But advocates say there’s one component often left out of the conversation: the tech companies that facilitate the creation and distribution of deepfake pornography. Experts and representatives from major tech companies like Meta say they are working together to prevent the spread of deepfake nudes, but some researchers and digital safety advocates argue that those same companies inadvertently enable the abuse through faulty moderation systems and dangerous advertisements.

It's true the issue is growing, and tech companies are, at times, struggling to keep up, said Sean Litton, former CEO of the Tech Coalition, an alliance of more than 60 technology companies focused on child safety.

"Generative AI is really changing everything," he said. "Its ability to create imagery at speed and scale is changing the whole paradigm."

Deepfake abuse and online child sexual exploitation rarely happen on just one platform. According to Litton, an offender may initially contact a child on a gaming platform before moving communication to a messaging service, and might even use a third platform to exchange images. A payment platform may be involved, but the financial institution doesn’t know what the transaction is about.

To address repeat offenders and cross-platform abuse, the Tech Coalition launched Lantern, a system that allows companies to share intelligence across their networks. Companies can distribute "signals" involving accounts, email addresses, URLs and other indicators that may help other platforms identify related abuse and remove accounts associated with those details.

Enforcement is not automatic; it requires an independent investigation by every company in the chain. But it allows for each company to have the information needed to start that investigation, Litton said.

Not all bad actors are adults grooming children. Often, teenagers are the ones making deepfake nudes of their peers. But Litton said the platforms treat all abusive imagery the same.

"They're going to take action on that account, and they're going to report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children," he said.

Other tools, like stopNCII.org, work by generating and assigning a unique "hash," sometimes referred to as a "digital fingerprint," to the intimate images or videos. Participating platforms then look for matches to the hash and remove any images from their systems, and stopNCII.org will periodically search for resurfaced content.

While tech companies point to new safety initiatives, some researchers say those same platforms can also enable deepfake abuse.

"The blame is getting placed on individuals, when really the only ones who stand to benefit from this content are the companies that are failing to effectively address it," said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, adding her organization has found many loopholes that allow for this type of content to appear on popular apps.

Paul said big tech companies have "far more resources" than the parents, schools, kids or counselors who often get tasked with handling deepfake nude crises. Even researchers like herself aren’t properly trained to process the amount of child sexual abuse material in their findings.

"It’s incredibly upsetting and incredibly psychologically taxing," she said. "We’re a small nonprofit that is not trained to do this. We're doing it because it's important and we've come across this, but we're talking about a multi-billion dollar corporation that has all the resources in the world to effectively address this and is choosing not to."

Companies reject the notion that they are ignoring the problem.

Cindy Southworth, Meta's head of women's safety, said the company has strict rules against nudify apps and has taken steps to fight them. She said the company removed more than 344,000 advertisements related to nudify apps during a recent three-month period and pursued legal action against some app operators. Meta was also a founding member of the Tech Coalition, and has shared over 5,500 URLs with industry partners to help block the same offenders across multiple platforms, Southworth added.

Litton said the deepfake problem isn’t going away anytime soon, but he hopes for a brighter future. Ahead of his interview with USA Today in August, he announced he was stepping down as CEO of the Tech Coalition (Erin Saltman stepped into the role Sept. 1). He wants to see initiatives like Lantern spread even further.

"We need to be talking to each other. We need to find our way forward," he said. "As these things are developing so rapidly, we need to work together."