Elon Musk’s X has prevented users from searching for Taylor Swift as the company responds to fake images that were spreading on its platform.

Users searching for Ms. Swift were met with a message that stated: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”

The error message began showing over the weekend and was still appearing on Jan. 29.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, said in a statement to news outlets.

Some related searches with Ms. Swift’s name and another word, such as “AI,” were also being blocked. Other combinations, such as “Taylor Swift image,” were still generating results.

Ms. Swift, one of the most popular singers in the world, has drawn renewed interest in recent months after beginning to date a National Football League player. She’s appeared at multiple games, including the American Football Conference championship on Sunday, to support him.

Images of Ms. Swift, including sexually explicit images, have been circulating on platforms like X in recent weeks. Some showed her likeness in compromising positions at football stadiums.

Certain searches still returned such images on Monday after the search pause was implemented.

The White House weighed in on Jan. 26, decrying the situation and describing it as alarming.

“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 nonconsensual, intimate imagery of real people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in Washington. “Sadly, though, too often, we know that lax enforcement disproportionately impacts women and they also impact girls, sadly, who are the overwhelming targets of harassment and also abuse.”

She said President Joe Biden is committed to reducing the risk of images from artificial intelligence (AI) products.

AI products introduced in recent years are able to produce images based on word prompts. The images are increasingly used by social media users and bloggers, among others.

President Biden in 2023 issued an executive order that required developers of top AI systems to provide information to the government and directed the U.S. Department of Commerce to “develop guidance for content authentication and watermarking to clearly label AI-generated content.”

Since then, actions taken have included nine government agencies completing AI risk assessments, although others are not yet complete, such as the watermarking guidance, the White House said Monday.

Mr. Musk bought X in 2022 after success with Tesla, SpaceX, and other companies. He has not yet commented on the developments concerning Ms. Swift.

In a message on Friday, X’s safety team said: “Posting Non-Consensual Nudity (NCN) images is strictly prohibited on X, and we have a zero-tolerance policy toward such content. Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them. We’re closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed. We’re committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment for all users.”

More Content Moderators

Social media company X is in the process of hiring 100 content moderators for a new office in Austin, Texas that will focus on fighting child abuse content, a goal it hopes to complete by the end of the year, an X executive said on Saturday.

The Elon Musk-owned company announced the new “Trust and Safety center of excellence” ahead of a U.S. Senate hearing on Jan. 31 about online child sexual exploitation. X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino is scheduled to testify, along with the CEOs of Meta Platforms, Snap, TikTok, and Discord.

“The team is currently being built,” said Mr. Benarroch, referring to the office in Austin, Texas, adding the goal to fill the positions by the end of the year is dependent on finding the right talent.

Since Mr. Musk acquired the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022, the industrialist has been criticized for his own controversial posts and his efforts to overhaul the platform’s content moderation policies.

In a blog post on Friday, X said it suspended 12.4 million accounts last year for violating its rules against child sexual exploitation, which it said was up from 2.3 million account suspensions in 2022.

“Not only are we detecting more bad actors faster, we’re also building new defenses that proactively reduce the discoverability of posts that contain this type of content,” the post stated. The company said it’s working with groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The firm also said that minor users account for less than 1 percent of its daily U.S. userbase.

The new Austin center will also help the company fight other types of harmful content, X said.

Reuters contributed to this report.