AI nudify websites are no longer just fringe experiments scattered around the internet. New research says they have become a large commercial ecosystem, with millions of monthly visitors, paid subscriptions, and a heavy dependence on mainstream technology services.
The findings raise a central question for platforms, payment providers, cloud companies, and online safety teams: why are services built around nonconsensual explicit imagery still able to operate at this scale?
A large market built around abuse
The research examined 85 nudify and undress websites. These services let users upload photos and use AI systems to generate nude images of the people shown in those photos. The source article describes the images as nonconsensual and abusive, including images involving women and girls and child sexual abuse material.
According to the findings revealed by Indicator, the 85 sites together averaged 18.5 million visitors for each of the past six months. The researchers also estimate that the operators may be making up to $36 million per year.
That scale matters because it shows the problem is not only about individual bad actors using generative AI. It is also about a business model. The sites often sell credits or subscriptions that allow users to generate images, turning intimate image abuse into a paid product.
Indicator cofounder and online safety researcher Alexios Mantzarlis described the nudifier ecosystem as a “lucrative business” and said “Silicon Valley’s laissez-faire approach to generative AI” has allowed it to continue. He argued that tech companies should have stopped supporting AI nudifiers once their purpose was clear.
Major infrastructure keeps the sites online
The research found that many of the websites use services from some of the best-known names in technology. Amazon and Cloudflare provide hosting or content delivery services for 62 of the 85 websites. Google’s sign-on system has been used on 54 of the websites.
The sites also rely on other mainstream services, including payment systems. That means the nudify economy is not operating entirely outside the ordinary web. It uses the same basic layers that legitimate online businesses use to host pages, manage traffic, register users, and collect money.
Amazon Web Services spokesperson Ryan Walsh said AWS terms require customers to follow “applicable” laws. He also said, “When we receive reports of potential violations of our terms, we act quickly to review and take steps to disable prohibited content,” and added that people can report issues to AWS safety teams.
Google spokesperson Karl Ryan said, “Some of these sites violate our terms, and our teams are taking action to address these violations, as well as working on longer-term solutions.” He also pointed to Google policies that prohibit illegal content and harassment-related content for developers using its sign-in system.
Cloudflare had not responded to WIRED’s request for comment at the time of writing. WIRED also said it was not naming the nudifier websites, to avoid giving them more exposure.
How researchers mapped the ecosystem
Indicator staff and investigative researcher Santiago Lakatos used open source tools and data, including the website analysis tool Built With, to study the infrastructure behind the 85 websites. Their review looked at services including content delivery networks, hosting providers, domain name companies, and webmaster tools.
The revenue estimate was based on a combination of subscription costs, estimated customer conversion rates, and web traffic that the sites sent to payment providers. For 18 of the websites, the researchers estimated revenue between $2.6 million and $18.4 million in the past six months. They said that could equal around $36 million a year.
The researchers also noted that this may be a conservative estimate. Their calculation did not include all websites, and it did not count transactions that happen away from the sites, including activity on Telegram.
The source article also notes that other reporting has pointed to the financial scale of the industry. German media outlet Der Spiegel reported whistleblower and leaked data suggesting one prominent website may have a multimillion-dollar budget. Another website has claimed to have made millions.
Traffic, tactics, and growth since 2019
Nudify and undress sites and bots have flourished since 2019, after emerging from tools and processes used to create the first explicit deepfakes. Bellingcat has reported that networks of interconnected companies have appeared online to provide the technology and profit from it.
The research found that, among the 10 most-visited sites, the United States sent the most visitors. India, Brazil, Mexico, and Germany made up the rest of the top five countries where people accessed the sites.
Search engines still direct people to nudify websites, but the source article says the sites are increasingly receiving visitors from other online sources. Other tactics and signals of growth include:
- fake malware-laced versions created by Russian hackers;
- sponsored videos with adult entertainers, reported by 404 Media;
- paid affiliate and referral programs;
- attempts to blend into the adult content industry.
Lakatos said the behavior of the nudifiers shows a push to “build and entrench themselves in a niche of the adult industry.” He said they are likely to keep trying to mix their operations into adult content, and that this trend should be countered by mainstream tech companies and the adult industry.
The harm is difficult to undo
The impact of these services falls on the people whose images are taken and manipulated. The source article says social media photos have been stolen and used to create abusive images. It also describes teenage boys around the world creating images of classmates, framing this as a new form of cyberbullying and abuse.
Once generated and shared, intimate image abuse can be hard for victims to remove from the web. That makes access and distribution central issues. If services are easy to find, easy to join, easy to pay for, and easy to keep online, the harm can spread faster than victims can respond.
Henry Ajder, an expert on AI and deepfakes, said that since 2019, nudification apps have shifted from “a handful of low-quality side projects” into “a cottage industry of professionalized illicit businesses with millions of users.” He argued that progress depends on businesses that support the nudification apps’ “perverse customer journey” taking targeted action.
The source article says there are signs that nudify websites are changing tactics to avoid crackdowns or bans. WIRED previously reported that nudify sites used single sign-on systems from Google, Apple, and Discord. Many developer accounts were disabled after that reporting. Indicator now says Google sign-in appears on 54 of the 85 websites and that some site creators used an “intermediary site” to “pose as a different URL for the registration.”
The picture from the research is clear: AI nudify websites are not just a content moderation problem. They are an infrastructure, payments, search, and account-access problem. The sites depend on ordinary web services, and researchers argue that meaningful pressure will require those services to make the businesses harder to reach and harder to profit from.