Google says its AI systems helped deter Play Store malware in 2025

Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, Google says, and the company credits that shift to increased investment in proactive security systems and AI-driven defences.

In its latest Android app ecosystem safety report released on Thursday, Google said it prevented 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2025. That number is down from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023.

The annual report outlines how Google protects Android users by reviewing and monitoring apps for threats, including malware, financial fraud, privacy violations, deceptive subscriptions, and other harmful activity.

Google also said it banned more than 80,000 developer accounts in 2025 that attempted to publish malicious or policy-violating apps. That total is also down year over year from 158,000 developer accounts banned in 2024 and 333,000 in 2023.

Google highlighted how its investments in AI and real-time defences have not only helped identify threats but also deterred them.

“Initiatives like developer verification, mandatory pre-review checks, and testing requirements have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing the paths for bad actors to enter,” the company’s blog post said, adding that its “AI-powered, multi-layer protections” have been “discouraging bad actors from publishing malicious apps.”

The company said it now runs more than 10,000 safety checks on every app published on Google Play and continues to recheck apps after they go live. Google also said it has integrated its latest generative AI models into the app review process, helping human reviewers identify more complex forms of malicious behaviour more quickly. Google added that it plans to increase its AI investments in 2026 to keep pace with emerging threats.

Google also reported that it prevented more than 255,000 apps from requesting or gaining excessive access to sensitive user data, down from 1.3 million in 2024. The company said it blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews in 2025 and prevented an average 0.5-star drop in ratings for apps targeted by review bombing.

Meanwhile, Google Play Protect, Android’s built-in defence system, identified more than 27 million new malicious apps and either warned users or blocked them from running. That figure is up from 13 million non-Play Store malicious apps detected in 2024 and five million in 2023. The increase suggests that bad actors are increasingly avoiding the Play Store and instead distributing malicious apps through other channels when targeting Android users.