There are a lot of dangerous things that happen when AI generated images pop up on social media platforms. Elon Musk is the founder of the new version of Twitter which is now called X. There was a big issue that happened on X, because people were making fake pictures of the very popular singer Taylor Swift. The whole social media platform had a couple million deep fake images pop up on X. The founders of X decided that they were going to ban the accounts with deep fake images, due to the mass number of images that popped up. A lot of people have started to give Taylor Swift negative attention, because a lot of people have wanted to look super similar to her, which one of the main reasons why X has banned all accounts of people that are trying to copy Taylor Swift’s exact look. It also includes when people try to search her name on the platform, X brings up a message that says error, and this has been upsetting many Taylor Swift fans.
“This is a temporary action and it will be done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” said Joe Benarroch, the head of business at X.
Taylor Swift was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2023 after she went on a record-shattering tour and became the world’s most streamed musical artist. According to the founders of X there was one image of Taylor Swift that was shared 47 million times before they decided to suspend that account.
Researchers found at least 34 thousand different AI-generated images. The most widely used images were football-related and they showed a painted Swift that objectified her. The Taylor Swift images first started to emerge from an ongoing campaign that began last year on many fringe platforms that produced sexually explicit AI images of famous women. Many researchers have said that the number of explicit images has grown in the past few years, as the technology that’s been used to produce such images has become easier and more accessible to use.
In 2019, there was a report that was released by the AI firm DeepFace Labs that showed these images were overwhelmingly weaponized against many women. The situation sparked many conversations about the risks that come with AI-generated image content. Many federal lawmakers that are on social media platforms aim to better enforce against many deep fake images. They were also talking about adding some “guardrails” on AI after the incident. The White House thought that all the AI images of Swift were “alarming.” Most of the images were found on X, some were found on Twitter, and many other different social media platforms had some AI images of the very popular singer too.
The founders of X are hoping that many social media users have learned their lesson about the danger of using AI images and that people won’t ever use AI images again.
