They might have heard or even read about the phenomenon before, but never seen, as Henry Ajder, an AI and deepfake expert puts it, “this kind of content in the synthetic flesh”.Īnd yet deepfake porn has long been thriving on certain corners of the internet – in Telegram channels (where, according to 404 Media, the Swift images originated), on 4chan, on dedicated sites like MrDeepFakes – targeting not just celebrities, but any woman who’s ever had her photo taken. Musk, meanwhile, promised to hire 100 more moderators to tackle child abuse and other illegal posts.įor many people, this has opened their eyes to the reality and ubiquity of deepfake porn, which makes up 98 per cent of all deepfake videos online. In the days following, a group of US senators introduced a bill that would criminalise the spread of non-consensual, sexualised deepfakes, while EU negotiators did the same (deepfake porn is already criminalised in the UK under the Online Safety Act). Swift hasn’t commented on the images herself, but, testament to her and her fanbase’s colossal clout, the whole debacle has caught the attention of those who can actually do something about it (according to a report by Control AI, 75 per cent of American voters support criminal charges against people who shared AI deepfake sexual imagery of Taylor Swift). At one point, X blocked users from searching Swift’s name altogether. (Again, this isn’t particularly surprising, given Elon Musk gutted X’s moderation team when he took over the platform in 2022.) Swifties quickly sprung into action, flooding the TL with ‘Protect Taylor Swift’ tweets in order to bury the trending search, ‘Taylor Swift AI’. As per The Verge, one of the most prolific posts, made by a now-suspended verified user, amassed more than 45 million views, 24,000 reposts, and hundreds of thousands of likes and bookmarks, and was live for 17 hours before it was removed. Once in the public domain, though, the deepfakes spread like wildfire. In fact, Swift is one of the most popular targets for deepfake porn, and has been edited into hardcore videos since at least 2017. The kinds of non-consensual, sexually-explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift that went viral on X – circulating and multiplying on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, for almost a whole day – have existed online for years. For those who’ve been keeping track of the ever-advancing abuse of deepfake technology, the story sadly came as no surprise.
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