Celebrities are constantly getting their privacy invaded by fans, paparazzi, and stalkers, and this recently happened to Taylor Swift, but not in the way you’d expect. Swift’s privacy was invaded by A.I. with people creating and posting fake explicit photos of her. While these photos were proven to be not real images of her but A.I. generated, it is still harmful for Swift’s mental wellbeing.
The scandal didn’t do much to tarnish her reputation since the images were found to be fake, but it is still not great news to hear that explicit images of you are being posted all over the internet. Deepfakes are defined by Merriam-Webster as “an image, or a video or audio recording, that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else.” This kind of A.I. is most commonly used to edit celebrities into scandalous scenes to cause havoc and possibly make the person who posted it go viral.
The U.S. government currently has no laws or regulations against these kinds of A.I.-generated images and videos. Due to the publicity of the photos of Swift, new laws may be coming our way. Sophomore, Juliet Tutino said, “The A.I images that people have made recently are crossing the line. Especially when they are about celebrities because they are just spreading lies about someone they don’t even know.”
The images of Swift were mostly spread across the social media site ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter.) While ‘X’ was the only site where those could be posted, people on Instagram, TikTok, and more were talking about the pictures. As a result, these outrageous posts gained more and more attention throughout the days that they were available online.
Swift wasn’t the first person to fall victim to harmful deepfakes and she definitely won’t be the last. With A.I. getting better and better at generating fake images, who knows what to expect in the future. History Teacher Mr. Cope said, “If the images were deepfakes then it’s not reality. That’s the end of the conversation.”
Swift’s team worked tirelessly to get rid of these images, to the point that when you searched “Taylor Swift” on ‘X’absolutely nothing would come up to prevent the searching of these images. The platform also banned any search terms that could lead to the images being found. While some remaining photos could possibly resurface, it is not very likely they will be found again on social media. Overall A.I. can cause serious harm to celebrities’ reputations and cause many public relations issues.
