The Future is Rated X
From her tour to the Grammys to the movie business to the NFL playoffs, Taylor Swift is a central character in many stories. Now she has a starring role in a story she wants nothing to do with. Well, it’s not really her. It’s her likeness. And in this show, she’s neither the opener nor the anywhere near the closing act. Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes. “Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift have been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) over the last day in the latest example of the proliferation of AI-generated fake pornography and the challenge of stopping it from spreading. One of the most prominent examples on X attracted more than 45 million views, 24,000 reposts, and hundreds of thousands of likes and bookmarks before the verified user who shared the images had their account suspended.” By then, the images were everywhere. One of the reasons Swift is such a massive star is because fans connect with the universality of the experiences she shares in her songs. Sadly, this will be true for her deepfake experience, too. Casey Newton in Platformer: The Taylor Swift deepfakes are a warning. “At its most basic level, this is a story about X, and not a particularly surprising one at that. When Elon Musk took over X, he dismantled its trust and safety teams and began enforcing its written policies — or not — depending on his whims … Separating consensual, permissible adult content from AI-generated harassment requires strong policies, dedicated teams and rapid enforcement capabilities. X has none of those, and that’s how you get 45 million views on a single post harassing Taylor Swift. It would be a mistake, though, to consider Swift’s harassment this week solely through the lens of X’s failure. A second, necessary lens is how platforms that have rejected calls to actively moderate content have created a means for bad actors to organize, create harmful content, and distribute it at scale.” And at this point, it’s hard to imagine that even platforms (or government agencies) that want to stop the spread of AI-doctored content will be able to keep up with the trolls and the tech. SciAm: AI Audio Deepfakes Are Quickly Outpacing Detection. Even in the best hands, AI and social media are a toxic mix. And it’s rarely in those hands. Elon Musk’s AI startup is reportedly looking to raise up to $6 billion.
+ The Swift story came out during the same week that we learned of the deepfake Joe Biden audio that was used by a robocaller to try get voters to stay home during the New Hampshire primary. (Listen for yourself.) Again, these technological fakes won’t be limited to the famous or the powerful. Crooks are already using voice cloning to scam grandparents out of money. Deepfake Joe might describe that as a bunch of malarkey. And we’re about to experience malarkey at scale.
