Taylor Swift: X says he prioritizes security by blocking search – 01/29/2024 – Tech

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

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

Any search for terms like “Taylor Swift” or “Taylor IA” on X returned an error message for several hours over the weekend, after AI-generated pornographic images of the singer proliferated online in recent days. The blockade continued this Monday (29).

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 out of an abundance of caution as we prioritize the safety of this issue,” said Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X.

Swift has not publicly commented on the matter.

OX was purchased for $44 billion in October 2022 by billionaire entrepreneur Musk, who reduced resources dedicated to content moderation and relaxed his moderation policies, citing his ideals of free speech.

Its use of the direct moderation mechanism this weekend comes as X and its competitors Meta, TikTok and Google’s YouTube face increasing pressure to combat the abuse of increasingly realistic and easily accessible deepfake technology. A fast-paced market of tools has emerged that allow anyone to use generative AI to create a video or image resembling a celebrity or politician in just a few clicks.

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

In response to a question about Swift’s images on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the circulation of the fake images was “alarming,” adding: “While social media companies take their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules.” She urged Congress to legislate on the issue.

On Wednesday, social media executives including Linda Yaccarino of X, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Shou Zi Chew of TikTok will be questioned at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child sexual exploitation. online, following growing concerns that its platforms do not do enough to protect children.

On Friday, the official X security account said in a statement that posting “non-consensual nudity (NCN)” images was “strictly prohibited” on the platform, which has a “zero tolerance policy on in relation to that content.”

They added: “Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate action against the accounts responsible for posting them. We are closely monitoring the situation to ensure any additional violations are immediately addressed and the content is removed.”

However, X’s reduced content moderation capabilities were unable to stop Swift’s fake images from being viewed millions of times before being removed, forcing the company to resort to blocking searches for one of the world’s biggest stars.

A report by technology news site 404 Media found that the images appeared to originate from the anonymous bulletin board 4chan and a group on the messaging app Telegram dedicated to sharing abusive AI-generated images of women, often made with a tool from Microsoft.

Microsoft said it is still investigating the images, but has “strengthened our existing security systems to prevent our services from being used to help generate images like these.” Telegram did not immediately respond to requests for comment.