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

The company says fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, a shift the tech giant credits with its increased investments in proactive security systems and artificial intelligence technology.

In its latest report on the health of the Android app ecosystem released on Thursday, Google said it prevented 1.75 million policy-violating apps from publishing on Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023.

The annual report provides a look at how Google keeps Android users safe by reviewing and monitoring apps to protect against malware, financial fraud, privacy violations, deceptive subscriptions, and other threats.

For example, Google says it banned more than 80,000 developer accounts in 2025 who tried to publish these types of bad apps. This number also decreased year-on-year from 158,000 in 2024, and 333,000 in 2023.

Google has touted how its investments in artificial intelligence and other real-time defenses have helped combat these types of threats, but also how they have served as a deterrent.

“Initiatives like developer verification, mandatory pre-review checks, and testing requirements have elevated the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing entry paths for bad actors,” the company’s blog post explained, adding that “multi-layered AI-powered protections” were “discouraging bad actors from deploying malicious apps.”

Google noted that it now performs more than 10,000 security checks for every app it publishes and continues to re-scan apps after deployment. The company also integrated state-of-the-art generative AI models into the app review process, helping human reviewers find more complex malicious patterns faster. Google said it plans to increase its investments in artificial intelligence in 2026 to stay ahead of emerging threats.

Additionally, Google said it prevented more than 255,000 apps from excessive access to sensitive user data, a number down from 1.3 million in 2024. The company also blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year, and prevented the average 0.5-star rating for apps targeted by review bombing from falling.

Meanwhile, Android’s defense system, known as Google Play Protect, identified more than 27 million new malicious apps, warning users or blocking the app from running. This is an increase from the 13 million non-Play Store apps identified in 2024 and five million viewed in 2023. These increases seem to indicate that bad actors are now avoiding the Play Store more often when targeting users with their malicious apps.