At WWDC, Advocates Demand New CEO John Ternus Stop Enabling the Spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material

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Contact: Manuel Madrid, mmadrid@fwdshift.com; Roy Loewenstein, roy@firetower.us, (410) 926-5110

Heat Initiative and UltraViolet Stage Demonstration at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference as Survivors’ Voices Continue to Go Unheard

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CUPERTINO, CA — Advocates from child safety organization Heat Initiative and women-led gender justice organization UltraViolet today staged a demonstration at the entrance to Apple Park during Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) to demand that incoming Apple CEO John Ternus take immediate steps to stop Apple from enabling the creation and distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). This is the fifth action by Heat Initiative and its partner organizations pushing Apple to remove child sexual abuse images and videos at the company’s headquarters since 2023.

Specifically, the advocates demanded that John Ternus and Apple:

Detect and remove known child sexual abuse images and videos from iCloud
Remove Grok, X, and all nudify technology from the App Store

As a part of the demonstration, advocates held a 12-by-6-foot banner reading: “Apple is powered by child sexual abuse. John Ternus, what will you do?” Heat Initiative CEO Sarah Gardner was locked to a tree in front of Apple Park and refused to leave while she read victims’ statements to passing attendees of WWDC.

Gardner amplified the voices of survivors too often ignored by the tech industry. One victim impact statement came from a survivor whose child sexual abuse material continues to be stored and shared in iCloud, and another was from the parent of a teenage girl in Pennsylvania who was digitally undressed and exploited through nonconsensual deepfakes created with AI nudification apps that were previously available in Apple’s App Store. Their stories underscore the lasting harm of image-based sexual abuse and the urgent need for decisive action by incoming Apple CEO John Ternus.

During the demonstration, advocates delivered to Apple a petition signed by representatives of 54 civil society organizations. The petition, first detailed in a letter sent last month to the National Association of Attorneys General, calls on state attorneys general to pursue legal action against Apple and Google for their role in facilitating sexual deepfake abuse.

“Today marks the fifth time since 2023 that advocates have come to Apple to demand they remove child sexual abuse images and videos from iCloud–unfortunately, in those three years Apple has continued to make money off of storing and sharing illegal videos and photos” said Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative. “Apple no longer just hosts these images and videos on iCloud, it profits from apps in its App Store that can be used to deepfake, undress, and create AI child sexual abuse material of any child. Tim Cook took Apple from bad to worse, but John Ternus can pick a different way forward–it’s time for him to choose if he stands with children and survivors.”

“Apple is making a deliberate choice to continue making millions off of the abuse of women and children,” said Jenna Sherman, Campaign Director at UltraViolet. “How many children harmed would it take to make Apple stop fueling this horrific crisis? How many more research reports would be enough to convince Apple that it’s undeniably culpable for storing child sexual abuse material from iCloud and directing children to nudify apps? How many more devastated parents sharing their testimonies would be required to invoke enough shame in Apple leadership to make them change course? Clearly, for Tim Cook, there was no real answer. No level of harm was enough. And now, his legacy will be one of tarnishing Apple’s reputation at the cost of society’s most vulnerable. We showed up at Apple today to ask loudly and clearly: what legacy will John Ternus choose?”

“I am asking Apple to use their power differently,” said Audrey Greenberg, whose daughter was victimized by AI deepfake images at Radnor High School in Pennsylvania in December 2025. “Make this harder to do. Build prevention into the device. Stop burying child safety in settings most parents cannot find. Make reporting fast and obvious. Hold apps accountable when they put children at risk. Give parents tools that actually work before the damage is done.”

In August 2021, Apple announced it would implement a new “CSAM Detection” feature, which would have identified known child sexual abuse material in iCloud using NeuralHash, a type of hashing technology that Apple developed. However, after the program was announced, Apple executives reversed their decision and ultimately killed the implementation of the program. In 2025, six major tech companies collectively reported more than 17 million pieces of child sexual abuse images and videos on their platforms to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children–Apple reported only 296.

In January, xAI’s chatbot Grok, which is integrated into X, was used to create an estimated 3 million sexual deepfakes, including an estimated 23,000 deepfakes depicting children. While the blowback was fierce and swift—leading xAI to announce limited restrictions on Grok’s generation of sexualized images and videos—many of the world’s largest technology companies continue to profit from an ecosystem that enables image-based sexual abuse, harassment, and exploitation. Companies like Apple have remained silent, ignoring their responsibility to prevent Apple products and platforms from being used to create and distribute nonconsensual sexual content.

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Heat Initiative is a collective of child safety experts and advocates working to hold the world’s most valuable and powerful tech companies accountable for failing to protect kids from online sexual exploitation.

UltraViolet is a national women-led gender justice organization, with an online community of more than 1 million members nationwide. Through its Reclaim the Domain campaign, UltraViolet has been at the center of a fight to advocate for greater safeguards against AI-facilitated sexual abuse enabled by some of the biggest tech companies in the world.