Deepfake claims yet another victim, and this time, its victim's name is none other than Taylor Swift, the famous American singer and a songwriter, best known for her narrative songs about her personal life.
With more than a handful of wins at Grammy Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and MTV Video Music Awards, Swift is also known for her entrepreneurial ventures, and her fashion collaborations.
Her achievements go beyond that, because Swift is also one of the world’s best-selling musicians with 200 million records sold.
Due to her fame, talents, and also her looks, Swift is a subject of widespread media coverage.
And of course, she is also a subject of many people's sexual fantasy.
This time, someone had a malicious intent, and that is creating a bunch of AI-generated images of Taylor Swift doing explicit things.
The AI-generated Taylor Swift images have gone internet viral for a good reason: they are pornographic in nature.
Depicted in photorealistic manner, the images depict the famous singer in a seemingly sea of men at a sports event, posing inappropriately, and seemingly willing to do anything for them, including sexual acts.
The images of Swift made it seems that she was attending a Kansas City Chiefs' game, and that she is about to be 'gangbanged' by the entire team and their supporters.
With many of the men have their hands all over Swift, the photos showed how the singer is getting groped and molested by the men, performing sex acts on random people in the crowds.
Another version is where Swift is seemingly at the men's locker room.
There, she is also depicted sexually, engaging sex acts with the men.
AI images are pictures generated through generative AI, and this is worrying because it takes deepfake to a whole new level.
Deepfake, which was originally introduced in a post on Reddit, swaps someone's face onto someone else's body. It caught the public interest due to how easy it was to swap celebrities' faces to porn stars' bodies.
But with generative AI, things have gone next level.
The Taylor Swift photos were generated through generative AI, and that it's relatively easy to do this because on the internet, there are way too many Taylor Swift photos on the internet to train an AI.
Querying internet search engine will return thousands upon thousands of her photos.
Swift, a world-class singer with pretty much an unmatched fame in the music industry, has her face all over the web.
Her photos are pretty much everywhere.
And because of she is currently dating Travis Kelce, her romance with the American football tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League have created quite a lot of photos, many of which can also be used as training material for the generative AI.
Read: How 'Customizable' Pornography Made By Artificial Intelligence Can Disrupt Online Pornography
Deepfakes have many numerous rounds in the past, and many famous celebrities have had their faces swapped with porn stars' bodies in one way or another.
But this case regarding Swift, is considered more disturbing.
This happens because of the way the fakery was generated.
Whereas the original deepfake, and other form of editing involve putting two or more existing images or videos together, Swift's NSFW images were "imagine" by AI and were non-existent before they were generated.
In short, with the power of generative AI, pretty much anyone can create never-before-seen images from scratch.
All it takes is just a carefully and curated prompt.
In other words, the AI-generated Taylor Swift photos show that pornography has become "customizable."
Read: 96 Percent Of All Deepfakes On The Web Are Porn, Report Said
Pornography can be described as the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal.
What began in ancient times, and predates almost all forms of arts, "porn" can be found in the form of carvings on stones, among others.
Fast forward, porn can be presented in a variety of other media, including magazines, animation, writing, film, video, and video games.
And in the world where the Rule 34 applies, and that internet pornography has killed Playboy, it was only a matter of time before something new will emerge.
And AI is clearly the hype that makes things that were previously impossible, possible.
The internet has a long history of becoming the medium for inappropriate and offensive things, and these Taylor Swift photos is a result of people's sexual fantasy.
This isn't new.
But involving AI in the process has made many people to feel disgusted.
Most notably, Taylor Swift's fans, or "Swifties" are absolutely furious that they prompt conversations about the dangers of AI and what it means for fake news and online bullying in the future.
What worries them the most is that, generative AI products are still in their relative infancy.
Before the AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift in the stadium and in the locker room went viral, someone had made AI-generated photos of the singer engaging in sexual intercourse with Oscar the Grouch.
The AI-made photos shows the Sesame Street character penetrating the American singer from behind on top of a pile of garbage.
Another AI-generated photo shows her engaging in another sex act with Kermit the Frog from The Muppets, and another engaging in a sex act with Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants.
Even though the Taylor Swift NSFW images are still kind of unrealistic, the many tech companies that are racing for this lucrative industry, will eventually make results created by generative AI products more realistic.
Sooner than later, fakery is going to be indistinguishable.
With many of these AI products are readily accessible, things are only going to get worse, and that fakery is going to litter the internet like never before.
In all, about a hundred AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift are being shared on social media, and among others, the trend made the hashtag #PROTECTTAYLORWIFT also viral.
And in response to this, X started blocking searches for Taylor Swift.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino has said X embraces an approach called "freedom of speech, not reach" — meaning it has zero tolerance for illegal content, but won't ban posts that are "lawful, but awful."
The block was only temporary.
Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, saying that "Search has been re-enabled and we will continue to be vigilant for any attempt to spread this content and will remove it if we find it."
Read: Deepfake, One Of The Most Serious AI Crime Threats, Researchers Said
Posting Non-Consensual Nudity (NCN) images is strictly prohibited on X and 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. We're closely…
— Safety (@Safety) January 26, 2024