White House voices alarm over explicit AI Taylor Swift deepfakes

A scourge of pornographic deepfake images generated by artificial intelligence and sexualizing people without their consent has hit its most famous victim, singer Taylor Swift. Photo / AP

The White House has said explicit doctored images of singer Taylor Swift circulating on social media are “very alarming” and urged Congress to take legislative action against the phenomenon.

The sexually explicit images depicting the pop star, which appeared to have been developed by artificial intelligence, were widely shared on social media on Thursday in one of the first cases of so-called deepfake pornography going viral.

At a news briefing on Friday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said: “This is very alarming. And so, we’re going to do what we can to deal with this issue.”

Jean-Pierre said Congress should take legislative action on the issue and said social media companies have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of such misinformation.

The rise of sophisticated AI image-generation tools, which can depict realistic photos of celebrities and landscapes, has raised concerns that they will be used for non-consensual pornography. Sharing deepfake images is illegal in the UK under the newly introduced Online Safety Bill.

While major image generation tools have introduced restrictions on generating explicit imagery, some users have developed workarounds to get the controls. Other tools have been developed specifically to make sexually explicit images.

Social media sites including Twitter were on Friday racing to remove the images from their platforms.

Twitter, which now calls itself X, said it was “actively removing all identified images” of the singer on Thursday.

It said: “Posting non-consensual nudity images is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content.”

It added: “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.”

One Tweet featuring the material was reportedly viewed more than 45 million times before being taken down. The website has been accused of failing to moderate content under Elon Musk’s ownership, which has seen thousands of staff laid off.

Facebook owner Meta was also trying to block the images which it said “violate” its policies.

According to the news website 404 Media, the images were traced back to a group chat on the messaging app Telegram.