YouTube and X Funneled Millions to Deepfake Nudify Sites, ISD Report Finds

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue's (ISD) 2026 report presents stark evidence that mainstream social media platforms, not fringe online communities, are the primary gateways driving millions of users to websites that create nonconsensual deepfake intimate images. The findings underscore the scale of the abuse, its disturbingly low cost, and the urgent, evolving legislative response taking shape across the United States.

ISD Report: YouTube and X as the Primary Gateways to Nudify Apps

The ISD's latest analysis focuses on the top 10 apps and sites used to generate nonconsensual intimate images and reveals a critical finding: referral traffic largely originates from mainstream social platforms, not obscure corners of the web ^M.

The Scale of Referral Traffic. Between December 2025 and March 2026, social networks drove over 5.7 million visits to nudify sites ^M. YouTube was the single largest driver, responsible for 1.82 million visits — more than 30% of the total referral traffic. X ranked second, generating over 1.3 million visits during the same period ^M. Videos promoting specific nudify apps often included direct links and promo codes for free credits, actively facilitating their use ^M. This builds on an earlier ISD analysis from 2025, which found that 31 synthetic intimate image abuse (SIIA) tool websites received a combined 21 million visits per month, with up to 4 million in a single month ⁴.

Direct Policy Violations. The ISD report explicitly notes that these findings are in "direct conflict" with YouTube's own policies, which prohibit sexually explicit content. The researchers found that content violating these policies was "easily discoverable and accessible," effectively turning the platform into a gateway for abuse ^M. Melanie Smith, ISD's senior director of research and policy, said, "It wasn't just that YouTube was a passive source of referral traffic. In a lot of these cases, it was facilitating the use of these tools as well," and added that enforcement of existing policies is not comprehensive ^M.

X and Search Engines as Access Points. The earlier 2025 ISD dispatch documented that X accounted for 289,660 of 410,592 total mentions of SIIA tool keywords between June 2020 and July 2025 — over 70% of all activity, much of it driven by bots ⁴. Furthermore, simple searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for terms like "deepnude," "nudify," and "undress app" yielded direct links to SIIA tools within the first 20 organic results. Bing surfaced such tools as its very first result for all three queries ⁴.

The Low Cost and Lucrative Business Model

The ISD report highlights the economic factors driving the proliferation of these tools.

Price for Abusers. Nudification tools allow users to generate explicit content for as little as $1 per image, making the abuse accessible to a wide range of perpetrators ^M.

Revenue for Platforms. A WIRED investigation cited in the ISD report estimated that these platforms collectively generate up to $36 million annually in revenue ^M. This lucrative model creates a strong financial incentive for operators to keep their services easily discoverable.

Common Targets and Motivations

The research details who is being targeted and why, revealing patterns that go beyond purely sexual motivations.

Primary Victims. The ISD found that common targets include current and ex-girlfriends and, disturbingly, relatives such as sisters and cousins ^M. Broader context from an Oxford Internet Institute study (2025) found that of nearly 35,000 publicly available deepfake model variants, 96% targeted women ^E. Deepfake-related cases have been reported in over 90 schools worldwide ^M.

Non-Sexual Motivations. The motivations behind the abuse are not always sexual. Smith noted that "a lot of the requests were about getting people fired from jobs and compromising their livelihoods in nefarious ways" ^M. This weaponization of deepfakes for reputational and professional harm represents a particularly insidious form of image-based abuse.

Legislative and Regulatory Responses

The scale of the problem has triggered a multi-layered legislative response at both the federal and state levels.

Federal: The Take It Down Act. Signed into law in May 2025, the TAKE IT DOWN Act (Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act) makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish or threaten to publish nonconsensual intimate imagery ^A. Its platform compliance requirements took full effect on May 19, 2026 ^F. Covered platforms, including social media and messaging apps, must now provide a process for victims to request removal of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) and must remove the content — along with any known identical copies — within 48 hours of a valid request, or face enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ^FN.

State-Level: Minnesota's First-in-Nation Nudification Ban. Minnesota became the first U.S. state to pass a law specifically banning "nudification" technology ^C. Effective August 1, 2026, the law prohibits anyone who owns or controls a website, application, or software from allowing users to access, download, or use nudification technology ^H. It also permits victims to bring civil actions against perpetrators ^H. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, including a unanimous 65-0 vote in the state Senate ^D. Companies in violation can face civil penalties of up to $500,000 per violation ^C.

Platform Responses and Enforcement Gaps. In January 2026, X faced significant backlash after its Grok AI chatbot was reportedly used to generate at least 23,000 sexualized images of children and 1.8 million of women over a period of nine days in December 2025 ^O. X subsequently restricted Grok access to paid users ^M. The ISD report calls for coordinated, system-wide responses including stronger platform regulation and digital literacy programs in schools ^M. The report also notes widespread concerns about enforcement gaps: YouTube's policies nominally ban linking to sexually explicit content, but the ISD found those rules are not being enforced comprehensively, allowing the platform to remain a primary gateway ^M.