Forty-Seven Million Views of a Fake
In January 2024, sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift spread across X and other platforms, with one post seen an estimated 47 million times before it was removed. The episode pushed X to disable searches for the singer's name and revived a stalled push in the U.S. Congress for a federal law against nonconsensual deepfakes.
A fake image, seen 47 million times
The images began circulating on X, formerly Twitter, in late January 2024. One post carrying a fabricated, sexually explicit depiction of the musician Taylor Swift was reported to have been seen more than 47 million times before it was taken down, according to Al Jazeera. The post had remained live for roughly 17 hours before removal, the outlet reported, citing figures that had circulated widely on the platform.
The images were computer-generated rather than photographs, part of a category of manipulated media commonly called deepfakes. Reality Defender, a group that tracks synthetic media, said it had followed dozens of unique fabricated images as they spread across platforms, according to Al Jazeera.
Platforms scramble to respond
As the images spread, X blocked searches for Swift's name on Jan. 27, 2024, returning an error message to users who queried it, and reinstated the searches two days later, according to reporting compiled by Wikipedia from contemporaneous news accounts. X's safety account said the platform had a “zero-tolerance policy” toward nonconsensual nude imagery and was removing the content and acting against the accounts posting it, Al Jazeera reported.
The fabricated images did not originate on X. People on the message board 4chan had run what amounted to a contest to defeat the safety filters on AI image generators and produce explicit pictures of female celebrities, according to The Register. The Swift images were created with Microsoft's Designer tool and shared in a Telegram group chat before spreading to X, the report said. “We are continuing to investigate these images and have strengthened our existing safety systems to further prevent our services from being misused to help generate images like them,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register.
A pattern beyond one target
Researchers said Swift was one of many targets. “While viral pornographic pictures of Taylor Swift have brought mainstream attention to the issue of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images, she is far from the only victim,” Cristina López G., a senior analyst at the research firm Graphika, told The Register. The White House said it was troubled by the episode; press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the images “alarming” and said social media companies had a role to play in enforcing their own rules, Al Jazeera reported.
A legislative response
The episode reenergized efforts in Washington to regulate nonconsensual deepfakes. On Jan. 30, 2024, Senators Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Amy Klobuchar and Josh Hawley introduced the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, or DEFIANCE Act, which would create a federal civil remedy allowing people identifiable in a “digital forgery” to sue those who produce, distribute or receive such material, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill defined a digital forgery as a depiction created through software, machine learning or artificial intelligence to falsely appear authentic.