Calls to criminalise deepfake explicit imagery as Taylor Swift is targeted

The rapid online spread of "deepimages of Taylor calls, including from US politicians, to criminalise the practice, in which artificial intelligence is used to synthesise fake but convincing explicit imager fake" pornographic Swift has renewed

- Ben Beaumont-Thomas

The images of the US pop star have been distributed across social media and seen by millions this week. Previously distributed on the app Telegram, one of the images of Swift hosted on X was seen 47m times before it was removed.

X said in a statement: "Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them." Yvette D Clarke, a Democrat congresswoman for New York, wrote on X: "What's happened to Taylor Swift is nothing new. For yrs, women have been targets of deepfakes [without] their consent. And [with] advancements in AI, creating deepfakes is easier & cheaper. This is an issue both sides of the aisle & even Swifties should be able to come together to solve." Some individual US states have their own legislation against deepfakes, but there is a growing push for a change to federal law.