X, the site formerly known as Twitter, has blocked searches for Taylor Swift after the site was flooded with pornographic AI-generated images and videos of the “Shake It Off” singer.
One image of Swift had apparently been viewed by users 47 million times before the account that posted it was removed, along with several others. However, the images were then shared across other social media platforms and continued to spread.
X said that had been working hard to remove the images and blocked searches for the singer’s name.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content,” a company statement said. “Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them”.
However, the sharing of the images has attracted the ire of the White House with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that it was “alarmed” with the posts and called on the US Congress to take legislative action.
“We are alarmed by the reports of the…circulation of images that you just laid out – of false images to be more exact, and it is alarming,” said Jean-Pierre.
“While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation, and non-consensual, intimate imagery of real people,” she added.
X’s problems with content moderation since Elon Musk’s takeover at the back end of 2022 are well documented. In November, it was kicked out of Australia’s voluntary disinformation regulatory code, for example.
Most of the world’s biggest brands have abandoned advertising on the site but it remains unclear where X will make up the shortfall in its earnings.
