Taylor Swift’s Name Banned From X Search
As people may know, Elon Musk changed his social media’s platform name from “Twitter” to “X.” Taylor Swift’s name has recently been temporarily banned from his search. Last week, inaccurate deepfake photos have been published of Swift. Which means, people have been posting inappropriate AI photos of Swift’s body. In attempt to retry their search a message pops up that says “Don’t fret- it’s not your fault.”
Conversely, searching her name with quotation marks seems to make a difference. When doing this posts pop up that mentions her name. This has made her the most popular victim of an affliction of social media. Anti-abuse groups and tech platforms have struggled lengthy to tackle this problem.
Swifties Counter Offense
Following the problem, Taylor Swift’s fanbase quickly ascended launching a counteroffensive on X and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag. Researchers seem to have found more than three dozen “artificial intelligence image-generator” photos. Some Taylor Swift fans, called “Swifties” even stated that they were reporting pages that posted the deepfakes. Some images made their way to other social media platforms such as Meta owned Facebook.
“The Swift images emerged from an ongoing campaign that began last year on fringe platforms to produce sexually explicit AI- generated images of women,” said Ben Decker. According to researchers, the number of explicit deepfakes have grown in the past few years. The most widely spread were football related photos- showing a painted or bloodied Swift that symbolized her and in some cases inflicted violent harm in her deepfake personas.
According to apnews.com some images that have went viral of Swift had been released as early as January 6. Most AI-generators have safeguards to prevent abuse, but anonymous commenters have discussed tactics on how to avoid the situation.
X’s move to reduce searches of Swift is likely a temporary solution. A few years ago, the AI Firms DeepTrace Labs showed these images intensely antagonized women. As long as social media exists, trolls will try to disrupt them.
By Dijana Reedfields
Sources:
AP News – X Pauses Taylor Swift Searches as Deepfake Explicit Images Spread by The Associated Press
Spectrum News – X Pauses Some Taylor Swift Searches as Deepfake Explicit Images Spread by Associated Press
Top and featured image Courtesy of Ronald Woan’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset image Courtesy of Acid Pix’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
