Fake and explicit images of Taylor Swift: White House is ‘alarmed’

Millions of people encountered fake, sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift on social media this week, underscoring for many the need to regulate potential nefarious uses of AI technology.

The White House press secretary told ABC News on Friday that they are “alarmed” by what happened to Swift online and that Congress “should take legislative action.”

“We are alarmed by reports of the circulation of images that you just exposed, fake images to be exact, and it is alarming,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC correspondent News at the White House, Karen L. Travers.

“While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and non-consensual intimate images of real people. “he added.

Jean-Pierre highlighted some of the actions the administration has taken recently on these issues, including: the launch of a task force to address online harassment and abuse and the Justice Department’s launch of the first national helpline 24/7 for survivors of image-based sexual abuse.

And the White House is not alone: ​​Outraged fans were shocked to discover that there is no federal law in the US that prevents or deters anyone from creating and sharing non-consensual deepfake images.

But just last week, Rep. Joe Morelle renewed his efforts to pass a bill that would make the nonconsensual sharing of explicit, digitally altered images a federal crime, with jail terms and fines.

“We are certainly hopeful that the news about Taylor Swift will help build momentum and increase support for our bill, which, as you know, would address her exact situation with both criminal and civil penalties,” a spokesperson for Morelle told ABC. News.

The congressman, a Democrat from New York, authored the bipartisan “Intimate Image Deepfake Prevention Act,” which is currently referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Deepfake pornography is often described as image-based sexual abuse, a term that also includes the creation and sharing of non-fabricated intimate images.

A few years ago, a user needed to have a certain level of technical skills to create AI-generated content with rapid advances in AI technology, but now it is a matter of downloading an app or clicking a few buttons.

Now experts say there is an entire commercial industry that thrives on creating and sharing digitally manufactured content that appears to include sexual abuse. Some of the websites that spread these fakes have thousands of paying members.

Last year, a town in Spain became international Headlines after several young schoolgirls said they had received fake nude images of themselves that were created using an easily accessible “undressing app” powered by artificial intelligence, sparking a wider discussion about the harm these tools can cause.

Swift’s sexually explicit images were likely fabricated using an artificial intelligence text-to-image conversion tool. Some of the images were shared on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

A post sharing screenshots of the fabricated images was reportedly viewed more than 45 million times before the account was suspended on Thursday.

Early Friday morning, X’s security team said it was “actively removing all identified images” and “taking appropriate action against the accounts responsible for posting them.”

“Posting non-consensual nudity (NCN) is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy toward such content,” the post reads. statement. “We are closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any additional violations are addressed immediately and the content is removed. We are committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment for all users.”

Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of Public Policy at RAINN, an anti-sexual assault nonprofit, said that daily “more than 100,000 images and videos like this are spread across the web, a virus in itself. We are angry for Taylor Swift , and even more angry at the millions of people who do not have the resources to claim autonomy over their images.”