Key Points:
- Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift have gone viral on social media platform X, prompting outrage.
- Fans of the singer banded together to mass report accounts sharing the images and spam the hashtags circulating them.
- The incident highlights issues with artificial intelligence being used to create "deepfake" or "revenge" porn.
Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift have gone viral on X (formerly Twitter), prompting outrage from her fans.
With recent advances in artificial intelligence technology, there has been a rising problem of users creating what is called "deepfake pornography", where celebrities and other public figures' faces or likenesses are morphed into sexually explicit nude photos or generated into pornographic videos.
AI has also been used to create "revenge porn" where users manipulate images of partners or generate explicit images or videos non-consensually.
In this instance, fake images of Taylor Swift nude in a football stadium were shared and quickly went viral.
One of the more prominent posts on X had more than 45 million views, over 20,000 reposts and hundreds of thousands of likes and bookmarks before the user who shared the images had their account suspended.
The post was up for 17 hours, according to the Verge.
"Taylor Swift AI" quickly started to trend which promoted the images to a wider audience, several of which are still visible on the platform, despite X's .
X has been widely criticised for gutting its moderation team under the direction of Elon Musk, its owner since late 2022, relying heavily on automated systems and user reporting.
Outlet the images back to a specific community on Telegram "dedicated to abusive images of women".
How did Taylor Swift fans react?
In response, fans of Swift began spamming the trending hashtags on X with legitimate photos and videos of the performer to drown out the non-consensual fake explicit images trending.
"Protect Taylor Swift" began trending on X on Thursday as fans put out a call to mass report the accounts sharing the fake photos.
In the United States, where Swift resides, there are no federal laws governing the creation and spread of deepfake pornography or other non-consensual AI-generated explicit material, and victims have to rely on whatever laws are in place in their individual state.
Australia launched a crackdown on deepfake pornography with the Online Safety Act 2021, unveiling regulations requiring internet search engines and platforms to do more to prevent the spread of AI-generated pornography and child sexual abuse material.
