Taylor Swift Becomes the Latest Target of Deepfake Pornography

A Global Issue

Deepfake technology has been used to create explicit and abusive images of popular singer, Taylor Swift. The images have been widely circulated across various social media platforms, creating a serious issue for the platform administrators and anti-exploitation organizations. The news comes from the sources of Reader Wall.

Swift’s Loyal Fanbase

Upon discovering the presence of these offensive images online, Swift’s loyal fan base, commonly known as “Swifties”, responded quickly. They launched a substantial campaign on Twitter, using the hashtag #ProtectTaylorSwift to fill the platform with positive images and messages about the singer. Many fans reported accounts responsible for sharing the deepfakes.

The Deepfake Reality

The deepfake-detecting group, Reality Defender, has managed to track a significant amount of non-consensual explicit content depicting Swift, particularly on major social media platforms. A significant portion of these deepfake images also appeared on Meta (formerly Facebook) and other social networks.

According to Mason Allen, head of growth at Reality Defender, they were spread to millions of users before they could be taken down. The researchers found a multitude of unique AI-generated images that were blatantly abusive and objectifying towards Swift.

Hatred Targeted at Women

According to reports by the AI firm, DeepTrace Labs, the number of explicit deepfakes has tripled over the past few years. This growth can be attributed to the ease of use and accessibility of the technology used to produce such images. Most alarmingly, these images have been predominantly weaponized against women, with the majority of victims being Hollywood actors and South Korean K-pop singers.

Social Media’s Response

Upon registering complaints regarding the images, social media platform X assured that their company strictly prohibits the sharing of non-consensual explicit images on its platform, and they have significantly reduced their content moderation teams since 2022.

The company announced they were “actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them” and “closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed.”

Similarly, Meta issued a statement strongly condemning such content and vowing to take appropriate actions to remove it from their platforms.

Involvement of AI

Reality Defender suggested that the images were likely generated by diffusion models, types of generative AI models that create new and realistic images from written prompts. The team did not try to trace origin of images, but the most commonly known models are Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and OpenAI’s DALL-E.

OpenAI stated that it has safeguards in place to prevent the generation of harmful content and declines requests that ask for public figures by name.

Legal Measures

Federal lawmakers are now more determined than ever to implement regulations that criminalize the use of deepfake porn to victimize individuals online. With AI’s increasing accessibility and affordability, it has become crucial to require creators to digitally watermark deepfake content, according to U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke.

Rep. Joe Morelle echoed her sentiments, calling the incident involving Swift disturbing and urging the need to criminalize the sharing of deepfake porn online.

Conclusion

The phenomenon of deepfake pornography is a growing issue that leaves lasting negative impacts. The incident with Taylor Swift calls attention to the urgent need for legal measures to put an end to it.