Pop star Taylor Swift is said to be “furious” after sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of her appeared en masse this week on the social media platform X Inc., formerly Twitter Inc.

Synthetic prurient content developed by artificial intelligence is nothing new, but as AI sees vast improvements and the technologies become more widely available, the content has become much more believable and easy for Joe Public to use. It’s a very modern problem, says the FBI, and it’s likely to get much worse.

This is not only an issue where celebrities are other well-known people are concerned. There has also been an increase in nonconsensual deepfakes of schoolchildren in what appears to be acts of bullying or revenge. There have been calls to get this under control, with some U.S. states moving in the direction of more regulation of generative AI. But like most countries, the U.S. seems two steps behind the technologies.

The recent cascade of deepfake Swift content that was shared on X is indicative of how difficult it can be to moderate before too much damage gets done. One of the posts on X gained around 45 million views, 24,000 reposts, and hundreds of thousands of likes before the verified promulgator of the image had the account suspended. The post, which is against X’s policies, was up 17 hours before this happened. After X, such images appeared on other social media platforms, such as Reddit and Facebook.

Currently, the search “Taylor Swift AI” or “Taylor Swift Deepfake” is trending on X. There have been various forms of the content, most of which reportedly feature Swift engaged in sexual acts with teammates or fans of her U.S. football athlete boyfriend, Travis Kelce. It’s not clear as yet which image and video generation tools were used to make the content.

According to the Daily Mail, a source close to Swift has said the content is “abusive, offensive, exploitative,” and Swift is currently mulling over whether to take legal action.

“It is shocking that the social media platform even let them be up to begin with,” said the source. “These images must be removed from everywhere they exist and should not be promoted by anyone. Legislation needs to be passed to prevent this, and laws must be enacted.”

Photo: Viktor Talashuk/Unsplash