Deepfake Explicit Images Of Taylor Swift Spread On Social Media. Her Fans Are Fighting Back

NEW YORK — Pornographic deepfake photos of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making her the most visible victim of a problem that tech companies and anti-abuse organisations have struggled to address.

This week, sexually obscene and abusive, false photographs of Swift became viral on the social networking platform X.

Her devoted “Swifties” soon rallied, launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter with a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more favourable images of the pop diva. Some said they were reporting accounts that were spreading deepfakes.

Reality Defender, a deepfake detection company, said it had tracked a flood of nonconsensual sexual material featuring Swift, particularly on X. Some photographs also made their way into Meta’s Facebook and other social media sites.

Deepfake Explicit Images Of Taylor Swift Spread On Social Media. Her Fans Are Fighting Back

“Unfortunately, they spread to millions and millions of users by the time that some of them were taken down,” said Mason Allen, Reality Defender’s head of growth.

The researchers discovered at least a few dozen unique AI-generated photos. The most popular were football-related, depicting a painted or bleeding Swift, which objectified her and, in some cases, inflicted violence on her deepfake character.

According to researchers, the quantity of explicit deepfakes has increased in recent years as the technology for creating such images has become more accessible and user-friendly. These images primarily targeted women, according to a 2019 analysis by AI startup DeepTrace Labs. According to reports, the majority of the dead were South Korean K-pop singers and Hollywood actors.

Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone who teaches a Swift course at New York University, says Swift’s fans quickly rally in favour of their artist, particularly those who take their devotion seriously and in cases of misconduct.

“This could be a huge deal if she does pursue it to court,” she said.

Deepfake Explicit Images Of Taylor Swift Spread On Social Media. Her Fans Are Fighting Back

Spanos says Swift’s deep fake pornography issue is similar to others she has had in the past, citing her 2017 lawsuit against a radio station DJ who allegedly groped her; jurors awarded Swift $1 in damages, which her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation” in the midst of the MeToo movement. (The $1 lawsuit became a pattern later, as seen in Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2023 countersuit against a skier.)

When asked for comment on the false Swift photographs, X linked The Associated Press to a post from its safety account, which stated that the firm strongly bans the distribution of nonconsensual nude images on its platform. Since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022, the business has significantly reduced the size of its content-moderation teams.

“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” the business stated in an X post early Friday morning. “We’re closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed.”

Meanwhile, Meta stated that it strongly opposes “the content that has appeared across different internet services” and is working to remove it.

“We continue to monitor our platforms for this violating content and will take appropriate action as needed,” the business stated.

A Swift spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday.

Allen stated that the researchers are 90% certain that diffusion models made the images, a generative artificial intelligence model capable of producing fresh and photorealistic images from written instructions. The most well-known are Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and OpenAI’s DALL-E. Allen’s group should have attempted to uncover the origins.

OpenAI stated that it had measures to prohibit the development of damaging information and “decline requests that ask for a public figure by name, including Taylor Swift.”

Deepfake Explicit Images Of Taylor Swift Spread On Social Media. Her Fans Are Fighting Back

Microsoft, which provides an image generator based partly on DALL-E, said Friday that it looked into whether its product had been abused. Like other commercial AI services, it stated that it does not allow “adult or nonconsensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce content that goes against our policies may result in loss of access to the service.”

When asked about the Swift deepfakes on “NBC Nightly News,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told anchor Lester Holt in an interview broadcast Tuesday that there is still more work to be done in terms of establishing AI protections and that “it behoves us to move fast on this.”

“Absolutely, this is alarming and terrible, and so therefore, yes, we have to act,” Nadella said in a statement.

Midjourney, OpenAI, and Stability AI, the makers of Stable Diffusion, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Federal politicians who have submitted proposals to increase restrictions or criminalise deepfake pornography said the event demonstrates why the United States has to establish stronger safeguards.

“For years, women have been victims of nonconsensual deepfakes, so what happened to Taylor Swift is more common than most people realise,” said U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York who has presented legislation requiring producers to digitally watermark deepfakes.

“Generative-AI is helping create better deepfakes at a fraction of the cost,” Clarke said.

U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, another New York Democrat who is supporting a bill to criminalise the spreading of deepfake pornography online, said Swift’s situation was alarming and has grown increasingly common on the internet.

“The images may be fake, but the consequences are very real,” Morelle said. “Deepfakes are happening every day to women everywhere in our increasingly digital world, and it’s time to put a stop to them.”

SOURCE – (AP)