X blocks Taylor Swift searches after fake AI videos go viral

Elon Musk’s X has blocked searches for Taylor Swift after sexually explicit images of the pop star created using artificial intelligence spread widely on the platform.

The incident is the latest example of how social media groups are scrambling to tackle so-called deepfakes: realistic images and audio, generated using AI, that can be abused to portray prominent individuals in compromising or misleading situations without their consent.

Any searches for terms such as “Taylor Swift” or “Taylor AI” on X returned an error message for several hours over the weekend, after AI-generated pornographic images of the singer proliferated online in the past few days. The change means that even legitimate content about one of the world’s most popular stars is harder to view on the site.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritise safety on this issue,” Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, said.

Swift has not publicly commented on the matter.

X was bought for $44bn in October 2022 by billionaire entrepreneur Musk, who has cut back on resources dedicated to policing content and loosened its moderation policies, citing his free speech ideals. 

Its use of the blunt moderation mechanism this weekend comes as X and its rivals Meta, TikTok and Google’s YouTube face mounting pressure to tackle abuse of increasingly realistic and easy-to-access deepfake technology. A brisk market of tools has emerged that allows anyone to use generative AI to create a video or image in the likeness of a celebrity or politician in several clicks. 

Though deepfake technology has been available for several years, recent advances in generative AI have made the images easier to create and more realistic. Experts warn that fake pornographic imagery is one of the most common emerging abuses of deepfake technology, and also point to its increasing use in political disinformation campaigns during a year of elections around the world.

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