Twitter scrambles to remove fake images of Taylor Swift

TWITTER is racing to remove deepfake explicit images of Taylor Swift after they went viral on the social network.

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

Twitter, which now calls itself X, said it was “actively removing all identified images”. It said: “We have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content.

“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them.”

One post featuring the material was reportedly viewed more than 45m 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 is also attempting to block the images. It said: “This content violates our policies and we’re removing it from our platforms and taking action against accounts that posted it. We’re continuing to monitor and if we identify any additional violating content, we’ll remove it and take appropriate action.”

The rise of increasingly sophisticated AI image generation tools, which can depict photo-realistic pictures of celebrities and landscapes, has raised growing concerns that they will be used for non-consensual pornography.

While major image generation tools have introduced restrictions on generating explicit imagery, some users have developed workarounds to get past major tools’ controls.

According to the news website 404 Media, the Swift images were traced back to a group chat on the messaging app Telegram. Users of the group have recommended using a Microsoft tool called Designer to generate AI images.

Designer has rules that try to prevent users generating images of celebrities, although people have in the past shared simple workarounds.

Swift is known for having a large and dedicated online fanbase.

She and her representatives are yet to comment on the case. Microsoft was contacted for comment.