Pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making the singer the most famous victim of a scourge that tech platforms and anti-abuse groups have struggled to fix.
The White House called the circulation of the sexually explicit images generated by AI “alarming” on Friday.
“We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of images… False images, to be more exact,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday.
“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 imagery of real people,” Jean-Pierre added.
The abusive fake images of Swift began circulating widely this week on the social media platform X.
“Too often, we know that lax enforcement disproportionately impacts women and they also impact girls, sadly, who are the overwhelming targets, the overwhelming targets of online harassment and also abuse,” Jean-Pierre continued.
When reached for comment on the fake images of Swift, X directed The Associated Press to a post from its safety account that said the company strictly prohibits the sharing of non-consensual nude images on its platform. The company has also sharply cut back its content-moderation teams since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.
Swift’s ardent fanbase of “Swifties” took matters into their own hands, quickly mobilizing and launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes.
The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms.
Meta said in a statement that it strongly condemns “the content that has appeared across different internet services” and has worked to remove it.
“We continue to monitor our platforms for this violating content and will take appropriate action as needed,” the company said.
A representative for Swift didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
In October of last year President Joe Biden signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that seeks to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights, creating an early set of guardrails that could be fortified by legislation and global agreements. Before signing the order, Biden said AI is driving change at “warp speed” and carries tremendous potential as well as perils.