There Are No Girls on the Internet - Taylor Swift Twitter deep fakes are everyone’s problem

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Those horrifying deep fake AI images of Taylor Swift that circulated on social media last week are a threat to all of us. It’s time for real cultural and legislative change. Check out Dr. Joy Buolamwini’s Algorithmic Justice League: https://www.ajl.org/ Listen to Dr. Joy Buolamwini’s episode: https://omny.fm/shows/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet/biden-s-executive-order-on-ai-protects-privacy-and 404 Media’s reporting on Microsoft: https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-taylor-swift-porn-twitter/ Teen Marvel star speaks out about sexually explicit deepfakes: ‘Why is this allowed?’ https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/teen-marvel-star-xochitl-gomez-speaks-deepfake-rcna134753 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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According to research from independent analyst Genevieve-O., the number of new pornographic deepfake videos has already surged more than ninefold since 2020. At the end of last year, the top 10 sites offering this AI-generated deepfake content hosted more than 114,000 videos, and Tara Swift has always been a common target. In fact, on one of these AI platforms,

she was the first celebrity targeted for deep-faked AI images. And the reality is this is a gender justice issue. It's an issue that impacts women. According to a study from Deep Trace Labs, 96% of deep fakes are non-consensual sexual depictions of women. So we're calling these images deep fakes, which is not wrong, but one technical thing that is important to understand about them is that we used to use the term deep fakes

to describe content where someone's head or was put on another person's body to give the impression that that person is nude or doing something sexually explicit, these Taylor Swift deep fakes are different in that they were created out of whole cloth using commercial AI tools. The images originated on the alternative messaging platform, Telegram, then made their way to 4chan. This telegram group was actually kind of a marketplace for celebrity deep fakes, where users were

requesting and trading deep-faked images of specific celebrities since last year. Now, most commercial AI image generators do have some safeguards in place that are meant to prevent abuse. So if you ask AI to generate an image that depicts a sexualized image of a child, for instance, it is not supposed to do that. But people are able to circumvent the moderation to generate non-consensual deep-thake images, like the ones we saw Taylor Swift, pretty easily. I have to give a major shout out to 404 media right here because they did a great job of digging and found that those images. images of Taylor Swift were likely made on Microsoft's AI creation tool called Designer. So Designer does have some safeguards in place to prevent the platform from being used to create this kind of content of celebrities. However, 4-4 Media ran a couple of tests and found that

designer will not generate an image if you just put Jennifer Aniston, but they were able to generate suggestive images of Jennifer Aniston if you use the phrase, Jennifer Actor-Aniston. So just put actor in between Jennifer and Aniston, and boom, non-concounter. consensual deepfakes. So prior to these deep fake images of Taylor Swift going viral on Twitter, a user in that telegram group recommended that members who were trying to make sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift use the phrase Taylor Singer Swift instead of just Taylor Swift to generate those images. Basically, anyone can get around these guardrails pretty easily. They're full of loopholes. And to get deepfakes of celebrities engaging in what looks like sex acts, all people needed

to do was describe activities that kind of look like sex acts without using sexually explicit terms. Now, none of this is terribly surprising. It's a kind of thing that people have been warning is really easy to do with AI for a long time. I cannot stress how much 404 media stayed on Microsoft's neck on this story. At first, Microsoft was kind of trying to weasel out of this and deny that their platform was being used to create these images and that their platform is where these Taylor Swift images originated, they initially said, we are investigating these reports and are taking appropriate action to address them. Our code of conduct prohibits the use of our tools for the creation of adult or non-consensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce

content that goes against our policies may result in a loss of access to the service. We have large teams working on the development of guardrails and other safety systems in line with our responsible AI principles, including content filtering, operational monitoring, and abuse detection to mitigate misuse of systems and help create a safer environment for users. So after that, Microsoft said they did an investigation, but they were unable to confirm the images were made using their tool. But after 404's reporting, Microsoft did close loopholes that would have allowed for these images to be created. 404 Media was able to verify that those loopholes did work to create these kinds of images on Thursday before Microsoft made its changes and that those loopholes stopped working after 404 Media

published an article on it. So it just really does seem like Microsoft was the culprit. And it's a really important reminder of the importance of good journalism to keep people accountable for the harms that their technology causes, because it would have been really easy for Microsoft to just keep denying that they were responsible for these images and just quietly close that loophole that allowed for images like the ones of Taylor Swift to be made on their platform. After this change, users on Telegram were complaining that it seemed like the loophole had been fixed that allowed for them to make the celebrity deepfakes. But unfortunately, that Telegram group where people were requesting and trading non-consensual deep-thake images of celebrities is still active, because

Telegram does not really remove people who use their platform to do this kind of thing. And people on that platform are already talking about what AI tools they're going to use to continue creating non-consensual deepfake porn of celebrities in the future, since Microsoft closed the loophole that allowed them to use their platform. So they're just going to keep doing this, and it is shockingly easy for them to keep doing. So these Taylor Swift images had been on Telegram and 4chan for a while, but one specific user who subscribes to Twitter Blue, so has a verified checkmark, and likely has their content algorithmically boosted on Twitter, brought them over to Twitter. It took Twitter 17 hours to suspend that user and delete that user's posts with the Taylor Swift images. However,

because of the way the internet works, those images were still all over Twitter. Like just suspending that one user does not mean all those images are going to go away to. So the way that Twitter handled this whole thing, I think is just abysmal and also really telling. First, I guess because those images were really all over Twitter, they just tried to fix it by blocking people

from being able to search Taylor Swift temporarily. Joe Benarach, head of business operations at Twitter, said, this is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue. But because it's Twitter, this was actually super easily circumvented. Attempts to search for Taylor Swift's name without quotation marks on Twitter on Monday resulted in an error message prompting for users to reach-fry their search, which added, don't fret, it's not your fault.

However, to get around this, all you would have to do is put quotation marks around her name, and then you could search her name like normal. So even though this was not a very effective way to deal with the issue, I would still be taking issue with it had they been able to successfully block Taylor Swift from search on Twitter. Because why should the target of this kind of sexual exploitation have to have their name blocked on social media search? Like, what if this happened to somebody who is not famous? You know, I'm thinking of content creators and journalists, people who need to be able to show up on those platforms for their careers. It's basically like saying that when you are targeted for this kind of thing, the only way to keep you safe in these online spaces is to,

obscure your presence there, which I take issue with because participation in online platforms is increasingly linked to how people just show up in 2024, socially, politically, and civically. So if the response to this is to make targeted people, most of whom are women, show up less in those spaces, it means that they will be even more marginalized online, a space where women are already marginalized. It just feels like the fix is to further obscure and silence women's voices in a space where we are already obscure. and silenced. And I don't think it's equitable. And I don't think that part of the solution of how we deal with this is to make us even more invisible on online spaces. Let's take a quick break.

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So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Elon Musk said that Twitter was going to hire 100 full-time staffers to do content moderation to combat sexually abusive material on Twitter. He said that he would be building a trust in safety center in Austin, Texas, and hire in-house agents who will be tasked with enforcing the site's content and safety rules. So I don't even have time to get into how annoying this is to me because basically the very same teams that Elon fired right after he took over at Twitter in 2022, he's being like, oh, whoops, actually, we needed

those teams. Those teams actually did something important. So Twitter released this whole thing this week about how they were taking really seriously sexually exploitative content, particularly content that involved children. And you might remember that for whatever reason a while back, Elon Musk made combating child sexual abuse material like his thing, like he started talking about it and grandstanding about how much work he did to fight it. However, Wired reported that back in 2022, when he took over at Twitter, even though he said that removing child exploitation was his, quote, number one priority, after all the firings and resignations,

just one sole staff member remained on a key team dedicated to removing child sexual abuse content from Twitter. And remember, he also reinstated the exactestated the extent. account of a right-wing provocateur who posted child exploitation material on Twitter, and they explained that decision to reinstate his account by saying, well, if abusive sexual child content is posted on Twitter to express outrage, then it's okay. Basically what I'm saying is that what Elon Musk says he cares about doing and what he actually does in practice are two different things. You know, it was his choice to gut the trust and safety team and content moderation teams when he took over at Twitter. So now, in classic Elon form,

he's backtracking on that great big mistake. This is actually a pattern for Elon Musk. It's like he comes in, gets rid of everything that people know that you need to make a platform work, realizes, oh, crap, turns out there was a reason for having that and we actually need it, reinstates it, and then I guess just like stands back and calls that innovation. When he first took over at Twitter, he immediately let people who had been previously suspended for abusive content or hate speech back on the platform. people like Kanye West, who Elon Musk then had to resuspend after Kanye West tweeted out a swastika. So this is just what Elon Musk does. I just can't believe he would announce creating content moderation teams and trust in safety teams, like it's some new innovation that he has come up with,

as opposed to something that was already in place at Twitter that he got rid of and now is reinstating. And it's funny because I was talking to producer Mike about this, and he made a very good point, which is that, All of this assumes that Elon will actually follow his word and do the thing that he says he's going to do. So will he actually create this content moderation team? Will he actually create a trust and safety team? Who knows? Because Elon has such a poor track record of actually doing the things he promises to do.

So there's been this huge reaction about these Taylor Swift deep fakes, and rightly so. But they are not the first time this has happened. We've covered how this kind of thing is happening at schools across the country in places like New Jersey and Colorado. and how they've been dealing with groups of male students essentially creating AI deepfake extortion rings of the girls in their school, where the boys in the school are invited to pay to see deepfakes nude images of their classmates, and the girls are basically forced into being extorted to pay money to avoid their images being circulated. In New Jersey, high school student Francesca Mani, a teenage victim of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes, joined Representative Joe Morel to tell her. story and advocate for legislation that would make this kind of thing a crime. And teen Marvel star, Social Gomez, was targeted with non-consensual deepfakes earlier this year, and she is only 17, a minor.

It's really heartbreaking because she says that Twitter pretty much did nothing to take these images down. They did not respond to requests for comment about it, and that she said in a podcast that she basically had to make personal peace with the fact that these deep faked images of her are out there. Like imagine what we are asking young people, children, minors to make individual peace with because the powers that be are not taking it seriously or doing anything to prevent this kind of thing from happening or dealing with it when it does happen.

And I do want to say something else about Social Gomez. We've talked about this a bit on the show before, but there does seem to be some kind of a tiered system of response depending on how famous the target is. Because certainly there was not this kind of outcry for Social Gomez. who was targeted for AI deep-thick images before Taylor Swift. We kind of saw something similar under the earlier iteration of Twitter where marginalized people were speaking up about getting torrents of online harassment and abuse, like black women activists were really open about what they were experiencing.

However, it took Saturday Night Live actor Leslie Jones to speak up on Twitter when she was facing a torrent of harassment after her Ghostbusters remake came out that Twitter took any meaningful steps to suspend the accounts of people who were doing it. Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey personally intervened to suspend those accounts and like replied to Leslie Jones saying that he was sorry that it happened. But our teens who are not famous are already being targeted for non-consensual deep fake images. You know, you shouldn't have to be Taylor Swift's level of famous to get people with power to take this seriously when we are all at risk. Now, the Taylor Swift deep fake images on Twitter have triggered a response from the Biden administration. At a White House press briefing, a reporter asked if Biden supported legislation to ban AI-generated porn images.

And White House Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre said, We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of false images. We are going to do what we can to deal with the issue. The Screen Actors Guild, the union that represents performers in Hollywood, has spoken up to, saying the development and dissemination of fake images, especially those of lewd nature, without someone's consent, must be made illegal. As a society, we have it in our power to control these technical. but we must act now before it is too late.

The way performers are depicted in AI without their consent has been a major point of contention with actors' unions like SAG. The union also supports broader legislation, like the No AI Frauds Act, that would prohibit the use of AI to distribute fake replicas of real people without their consent, regardless of whether those images are sexually explicit or not. SAG went on to say,

we support Taylor and women everywhere who are the victims of this kind of theft of their privacy and right to autonomy. So I do have to add that there is something weird happening around Taylor Swift right now. Like it does not surprise me that these deep fakes were first circulated on Telegram and 4chan, where far-right extremists proliferate. So just yesterday, failed Republican presidential candidate, Viviak Ramoswamy, spewed some pretty wacky conspiracy theories that Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, NFL football player Travis Kelchie, were being like artificially, culturally propped up by the media for some kind of a democratic, I don't know,

sci-op campaign? He tweeted, I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this fall. Taylor Swift's boyfriend plays for the chiefs who just won the playoff game and are going to the Super Bowl. And on Fox News this week, they called her boyfriend Mr. Pfizer because he promoted vaccination to curb COVID.

So something I've always found weird about that. is that Taylor Swift is not even super publicly or explicitly that political. Like, she did endorse Biden in 2020. She's done a few political things here or there, but she's not some, like, radical political figure. She didn't even refer to herself as a feminist until pretty recently. So, like, what gives? My theory is that I think that Taylor Swift represents the anxiety

that the right has around young, childless white women right now. We know that white women who are married to white men tend to vote Republican, democratically speaking. Like, they went really hard for Trump. But that it's not so for their unmarried white women counterparts. And I think the Republican Party just does not have a lot to offer these women. And they know that. So instead of even trying to offer them anything,

they just lash out at Taylor Swift, who for whatever reason they have decided is representative of single unmarried white women because she is so visible and so powerful. And I think that is what they really hate about Taylor Swift. that is why she is a target, because they hate her visibility. They hate that the cameras cut to her at NFL games when she's in the stands, as if she controls the cameras. They hate that she is not acting ashamed to be young and unmarried and having fun and having power.

So targeting her with deep figs is a way to sexually humiliate and humble her. To take away that power and to remind her that at the end of the day, we can still reduce you to a sexualized object whenever we want, and we have the tech to do it. And I remember when the conversation was around celebrity images being hacked or stolen and released to the public, people would say like, oh, well, just don't take those kind of pictures if you don't want other people to see them. But now that anyone can be targeted for non-consensual deep fake sexualized images, what will the guidance be then? Like, don't be too visible. Don't be annoying. Don't be a leftist.

Don't be a woman. Don't exist. And I think that is really the question we need to grapple with. Do we want to live in a future where any woman, any girl, any person. can be reduced to a sexual object via commercially available AI platforms that someone, like Microsoft, is making money off of? I know it is grim. And on the Patreon, a listener, Sierra, actually pointed something out that this is an issue that is frustrating because it feels like there's not a ton that we can do. Here in the United States, we're sort of waiting and watching

as lawmakers drag their feet and kind of kick the can and pass the buck. But there is still no federal legislation prohibiting someone from making deep fake images. I would say that one thing that we can all do right now is kind of cultural. Really see this issue as one that impacts all of us, one that impacts our democracy, one that will dictate whether or not we are able to have an equitable media and democratic landscape. And when you talk about these issues, and please do talk about them, remember that it is not just about Taylor or Sochial or any one person.

It's a systemic failure. If girls across the globe are being threatened by deep fake technology, that is not an individual problem. It is a systemic problem that will take a systemic solution. I would also say to make sure that you're following the women and women of color who have been advocating for making AI safer for a long time, women like Dr. Joy Blumweeney, who we talked to on the podcast before, because she's been doing a lot of work around challenging some of the existential threats that AI poses to marginalize people for a long time. Check out her advocacy organization, the Algorithmic Justice League. We'll put all the links in the show notes. and know that there is movement on this.

Because of the advocacy of people like Dr. Bolamweeney, the Biden administration released an executive order putting some guard bills on AI last year. And lawmakers like Rep Joe Morel and Rep. Yvette Clark have introduced legislation criminalizing deepfakes. That is because of advocacy and that is because of people speaking up, people using their voices to say,

this is not okay. So we need to educate ourselves, stay checked in, and keep making it clear that this is not a. acceptable. You know, I'm happy that lawmakers are presenting something, but that is not nearly enough. So let's all stay engaged because this fight is all of our fights. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland

is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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