Content material warning: This story discusses non-consensual deepfake nude imagery.
On the floor, Crushmate seemed to be one in all many synthetic intelligence “girlfriend” or “companion” apps. Its a number of web sites mentioned it specialised in “crafting the AI woman of your desires”, and on Google and Apple’s app shops, it was described as an “AI chat product designed to supply customers with a complete emotional assist and communication expertise”.
However advertisements linked to the app on widespread social media platforms confirmed it was providing a wholly totally different service – making nonconsensual nude photos of actual ladies.
Meta introduced final week that it was suing Pleasure Timeline HK Restricted (“Pleasure Timeline”), the Hong Kong-based firm it mentioned was behind a gaggle of deepfake “nudifying” apps beneath “CrushAI” – together with Crushmate – to forestall it from inserting advertisements on its platforms. This was following a 404 Media report in January that CrushAI had purchased 1000’s of advertisements on Instagram and Fb, utilizing a number of pretend Fb profiles to evade Meta’s moderators.
Nonetheless, a Bellingcat investigation has uncovered two extra corporations in Hong Kong and China – Soul friendship HK Restricted (“Soul friendship”) and Wuhan Ruisen Zhuoxin Community Know-how Co., Ltd (“Wuhan Ruisen”) – that seem to have hyperlinks to those apps.
The CrushAI advertisements confirmed ladies, together with celebrities and influencers, having their garments artificially eliminated utilizing deepfake know-how. They led to pages prompting customers to add images of individuals and “erase garments” off them.
404 Media’s report prompted Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to write to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about CrushAI’s promoting on Meta’s platforms, in a letter declaring that “the era and dissemination of nonconsensual, deepfake intimate imagery are acts of abuse and violations of privateness that inflict lasting hurt on victims”.
Requested concerning the two different corporations Bellingcat has linked to CrushAI, Meta mentioned it was wanting into them and would take motion, together with authorized motion, as obligatory if it discovered violations of its insurance policies. The corporate additionally mentioned they are going to proceed to take the required steps towards different advertisers who abuse their platform.
Soul friendship was the listed developer of Crushmate on the Apple App Retailer, whereas Wuhan Ruisen filed an software for a US federal trademark associated to the Crushmate model final yr. Paperwork supporting Wuhan Ruisen’s trademark software confirmed that the app earned greater than US$45,000 in subscriptions between December 2023 and July final yr.
The criticism, which Meta offered to Bellingcat, reveals that the social media large is looking for an injunction to forestall Pleasure Timeline from inserting advertisements on its platforms, in addition to to assert again US$289,200 (HK$2.28 million) in prices spent to analyze and take away advertisements the corporate positioned for the CrushAI apps. The criticism acknowledged that the Hong Kong firm positioned over 87,000 violating advertisements positioned on Fb and Instagram as of February this yr, primarily concentrating on customers within the US, Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK.
In response to Bellingcat’s queries, a Crushmate consultant mentioned that the app had completely shut down however had “very briefly relied on the assist of many third-party companions” within the early phases of its enterprise.
On the connection between CrushAI and Pleasure Timeline in addition to the 2 different corporations the consultant mentioned that “because the mission has now ended and the workforce now not exists, I’m sadly unable to confirm whether or not the corporate you talked about in your electronic mail was one in all our former companions”.
Neither Soul friendship nor Pleasure Timeline responded to a number of requests for remark about their relationship with one another or with CrushAI.
Pleasure Timeline
Like different infamous AI nudify apps, CrushAI seems to personal a number of web sites with the identical area identify (“crushmate”) however totally different extensions reminiscent of .web site .web .vip and .us. Bellingcat discovered no less than 23 domains that used the Crushmate identify, all of that are now not accessible. These had been largely registered on two days in April and July 2024. We additionally discovered different websites with similar homepage layouts and content material to Crushmate, with comparable domains like “Crushai”, “crushh”, “crrru”, “crushx” and “crush1”.
Utilizing Area Instruments, we had been capable of hyperlink these websites, and extra, by means of an similar Google Analytics Tag, which is used to trace web site site visitors.
Whereas practically each one in all these web sites had their WHOIS registration information redacted for privateness, one was not, and it was registered to Pleasure Timeline.
Our search on Whoxy, a reverse WHOIS search instrument, discovered 158 domains registered publicly to Pleasure Timeline on the time of publication. Just one carried the Crushmate identify, however 28 extra had virtually similar layouts and likewise seemed to be deepfake “nudify” apps.
For instance, archived variations of the primary pages of two of those domains, “sparkaifun [dot] on-line” and “chatnplay [dot] on-line”, had been similar to the house web page and “clothes eraser” pages on CrushAI’s websites.
It’s attainable that there are extra comparable net domains that didn’t present up in our searches, as area registrants also can select to redact their data. Different energetic domains owned by Pleasure Timeline, in accordance with publicly accessible area data, embrace homepages for different “AI chat” apps, photograph enhancing apps, and cellular video games, amongst others.
On Hong Kong’s Firms Registry, Pleasure Timeline’s director was listed as an individual referred to as Zhang Xiao, who holds a Chinese language passport.
The corporate was registered with 100 shares issued at a complete worth of 100 Hong Kong {dollars} (US$12.80). Zhang Xiao was listed within the firm paperwork as proudly owning 90 of those shares, whereas one other Chinese language nationwide, Zhang Shiwei, owns 10.
Zhang Shiwei is the director of Soul friendship, which Bellingcat’s investigation has additionally linked to the CrushAI apps.
Soul friendship
Though Crushmate is now not out there on Google’s Play Retailer and Apple’s App Retailer, archived variations of its app listings on each of those shops led us to Soul friendship, one other Hong Kong-based firm.
Crushmate’s developer on Google’s Play Retailer from September 2024, primarily based on a cached model of the web page, was listed as “LipLip Crew”. Our on-line searches of LipLip Crew confirmed that it had one other app listed on the Play Retailer referred to as “LipLip – Dwell Video Chat&Meet”, which seemed to be a chatting app.
Bellingcat couldn’t discover any firm referred to as “LipLip Crew” registered in Hong Kong, the place LipLip-Chat’s archived X bio acknowledged that the app relies.
However the URL of LipLip’s web page from the developer’s archived Google Play Retailer profile, primarily based on each listed copies of the Google Play Retailer itemizing and LipLip’s X bio, included the ID “hk.soulfriendship.chat” – our first clue that one other firm was concerned.
On the Google Play Retailer, the app ID which makes up a part of the URL is primarily based on the bundle identify of an app, which uniquely identifies the app throughout the Play Retailer. The bundle identify may very well be set to something, so long as it isn’t utilized by every other app on the Play Retailer.
Nonetheless, on this case, it occurs to intently match the identify of Soul friendship, the Hong Kong-based developer that printed each Crushmate and LipLip-Chat on the Apple App Retailer.
We had been capable of finding extra data on Soul friendship by viewing LipLip-Chat’s Apple App Retailer itemizing as it might seem from a rustic throughout the European Union.
As a result of EU’s Digital Providers Act, Apple is legally required to confirm and show extra detailed data for merchants distributing apps within the EU than in different jurisdictions.
This consists of builders’ Knowledge Common Numbering System (DUNS) quantity – a nine-digit quantity key for uniquely figuring out corporations worldwide – in addition to contact data reminiscent of their deal with, cellphone quantity and electronic mail deal with.
Even from exterior of the EU, it’s simple to view this data by tweaking the nation code within the URL of the web-based App Retailer itemizing.
For instance, the developer data seen on the US app retailer itemizing for LipLip-Chat solely reveals Soul friendship’s identify. However merely altering the nation code from “us” to “nl” (the Netherlands’ nation code) reveals the corporate’s DUNS Quantity, deal with, cellphone quantity and electronic mail deal with:
The deal with listed for Soul friendship, within the industrial district of Wan Chai, Hong Kong, is similar one on Pleasure Timeline’s area identify registration data. This deal with can also be listed as belonging to one of many 6,900 or so Belief or Firm Service Suppliers (TCSPs) in Hong Kong that are authorised to supply, amongst different company companies, a registered enterprise or workplace deal with.
Paperwork from the Firms Registry in Hong Kong present that Zhang Shiwei is Soul friendship’s listed director. One other deal with in Kwun Tong, an industrial space in Hong Kong, is listed within the paperwork for Soul friendship.
Though they’ve totally different names and administrators, their shareholders are the identical and there are a number of overlaps in how Soul friendship and Pleasure Timeline function.
Like Pleasure Timeline, Soul friendship was registered with 100 shares issued at a complete worth of HK$100. In a mirror of the association for Pleasure Timeline, Zhang Shiwei, the director of Soul friendship, owns 90 of Soul friendship’s shares whereas Zhang Xiao, the director of Pleasure Timeline, owns 10 shares.
Along with their widespread TCSP-linked deal with in Wan Chai, each corporations used the identical registered workplace deal with in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong on their enterprise filings. That is the deal with of one other TCSP, which serves as the corporate secretary for each of those companies.
Searches for Soul friendship and Pleasure Timeline on-line didn’t flip up a lot, besides web sites beneath their names that used similar templates. Neither web site talked about Crushmate or CrushAI, and each mentioned on their “About Us” web page that they had been based in 2022 and offered “IT consulting and software program improvement companies”.
Wuhan Ruisen Zhuoxin Community Know-how
To complicate issues even additional, Bellingcat discovered two US federal trademark functions filed for Crushmate by Wuhan Ruisen in August 2024. The primary software, within the class of “Promoting, Enterprise, and Retail Providers”, was rejected on the grounds that the corporate didn’t present ample proof of utilizing the Crushmate mark in commerce.
Nonetheless, the second, in “Laptop and Software program Merchandise and Electrical and Scientific Merchandise”, was formally registered with the trademark workplace on April 29, 2025. The paperwork filed for federal trademark functions are publicly accessible by means of the US Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO)’s web site.
Of their trademark functions, Wuhan Ruisen offered “specimens”, that are samples of how their trademark is utilized in commerce. These included screenshots of each Crushmate’s Google Play Retailer and Apple App Retailer listings – exhibiting LipLip workforce and Soul friendship HK because the app builders – in addition to screenshots of their web site.
John Halski, a US-based lawyer whose apply focuses on trademark and copyright, informed Bellingcat that it’s attainable for a corporation to incorporate samples or specimens of their trademark software from a distinct firm by means of a 3rd occasion licence.
Nonetheless, Halski mentioned that whether or not a number of firm names in an software could be questioned relied on the examiner.
“The [trademark] examiner has the discretion to ask: ‘You despatched me this specimen exhibiting that occasion XYZ is utilizing it and also you declare that your identify is ABC’. Then they could ask, ‘is that this beneath a licence association?’”
Anybody could file an software for a trademark, whether or not or not they personal it, however different events could oppose the appliance – reminiscent of if they’re claiming to be the unique house owners of the trademark – inside 30 days after it’s printed. Wuhan Ruisen’s software for the Crushmate trademark was printed on March 11 this yr, and efficiently registered with out opposition on April 29.
The appliance paperwork included a screenshot of a dashboard that appeared to indicate a Stripe fee dashboard, with 4,563 profitable funds. The entire seen funds had been for US$9.99, which was the weekly value of a VIP subscription to Crushmate on the US web site on the time the appliance was submitted.
Assuming the one funds recorded by the dashboard had been for these subscriptions, this might indicate that by the point of the appliance being submitted in August final yr, Crushmate had earned no less than US$45,584.37 in subscriptions. It’s unclear what the precise timeframe captured by the screenshot of this dashboard was, though the appliance states that the primary use of the trademark was Dec. 25, 2023.
One other screengrab included within the software, additionally apparently from Crushmate’s Stripe dashboard, confirmed a breakdown of the places of Crushmate’s paying clients. This view on Stripe’s dashboard shows the “tax thresholds” for every state within the US and reveals whether or not the revenue generated has reached taxable standing. The screengrab indicated that Crushmate had paying clients throughout the US, with essentially the most transactions from Kentucky and Utah.
Based mostly on paperwork from China’s official enterprise registry which match the corporate’s identify in Chinese language and deal with, Wuhan Ruisen was established in March 2021 with a registered capital of 10 million Chinese language yuan (US$1.38 million).
We aren’t naming the authorized consultant of Wuhan Ruisen in these paperwork as they don’t seem on Soul friendship or Pleasure Timeline’s enterprise registration data in Hong Kong.
A seek for the corporate’s identify on China’s Web Content material Supplier licence database reveals that it registered for 5 totally different domains. Just one was accessible as of June. This web site, which describes the Wuhan firm as a “skilled software program improvement firm” specializing in the event of desktop and cellular software program, lists plenty of apps supposedly developed by the corporate. Crushmate or any of the CrushAI apps weren’t amongst them.
A few of the apps on this web page have an in depth resemblance to software program by international builders. For instance, the primary app on the web page is an AI translator referred to as “DeepL”, which can also be the identify of an AI translation app by a German startup that doesn’t at present supply paid plans in mainland China.
On third-party shopper service platform Heimao Tousu, there have been greater than 40 complaints between October 2023 and March 2025 concerning the firm. Most mentioned they paid between 29 and 69 yuan (US$4 to US$9.50) to obtain software program they believed to be real, solely to find the merchandise had been pretend or didn’t work. After they requested for refunds, they had been ignored.
Wuhan Ruisen didn’t reply to a number of emails requesting for remark, and once we referred to as the cellphone quantity listed on its web site, we bought an automatic message stating that the quantity dialled was invalid.
Taking It Down
Crushmate’s X profile and a US area web site carrying its identify was accessible till April. That very same month, the US Take It Down Act, which criminalises the distribution of non-consensual deepfake pornography on the federal stage, handed. It was signed into legislation in Could, and Crushmate’s X profile was deleted someday that month.
At time of publication, all 23 of the Crushmate domains, the extra nudify-related domains owned by Pleasure Timeline, and the opposite CrushAI domains look like both offline or show an “beneath upkeep” discover after customers register and log in.
When Bellingcat reached out to a assist electronic mail listed on a number of Crushmate web sites, an unnamed particular person responded.
This particular person mentioned the choice to close down operations and disband the workforce truly happened “a number of months” earlier than the introduction of the Take It Down Act.
“Since then, this inbox has remained inactive,” they mentioned.
The particular person emailing us didn’t clarify why they had been replying from an inactive account, or reply to subsequent questions on who they had been or what their function in Crushmate or CrushAI was.
Pleasure Timeline has bought domains as just lately as Could 14, however none of those look like nudify websites or at present internet hosting content material.
Featured picture credit score: Reihaneh Golpayegani / Telling Tales / Licensed by CC-BY 4.0
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