In an illustrative case of the growing spread of AI-generated pornography, a controversial incident occurred on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). Artificially created explicit images depicting the famous singer Taylor Swift have been circulating massively in recent days, raising questions about the effectiveness of controls against the dissemination of such content. One of the most high-profile cases on The post remained active on Elon Musk's social media for about 17 hours before it was removed.
As discussion surrounding the viral post increased, the images began to spread, being reposted on other accounts. Many of these still remain online, and a flood of new graphic forgeries has appeared in the meantime. In some regions, the hashtag “Taylor Swift AI” became a trending topic, further promoting the images to a wider audience. A report of 404 Avg revealed that the images may originate in a group on Telegram, where users share explicit AI-generated images, often created with Microsoft Designer. Users in the group reportedly joked about how Swift's images went viral on X.
Taylor Swift fans have flooded the platform with reports of the explicit fakes. X's policies regarding synthetic and manipulated media and non-consensual nudity explicitly prohibit this type of content on the platform, but Swift fans criticized X for allowing many of the posts to remain online for so long. In response, they flooded the hashtags used to circulate the images with messages promoting actual clips of Swift performing instead, in order to hide the explicit fakes.
The incident highlights the real challenge of stopping deepfake pornography and AI images of real people. Some image generators have restrictions that prevent the production of pornographic and photorealistic images of celebrities, especially on X, which allows much more explicit content than other social networks. The company is currently under investigation by the EU over claims that it is being used to “spread illegal content and disinformation” and is facing questions about its crisis protocols after the spread of misinformation about the war between Israel and Hamas via the platform was revealed.
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