Taylor Swift fake explicit images spread on social media

Social-media company X lifted the ban on searches for Taylor Swift after blocking users from searching for her following the spread of fake sexually-explicit images of the pop singer.

The search has been reactivated and the social media platform “will continue to be vigilant for any attempt to spread this content and will remove it if we find it,” Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, said in a statement.

Searches for Taylor Swift’s name on Sunday afternoon on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter yielded the error message, “Something went wrong. Try reloading.” X had called the measure a temporary action done with “abundance of caution.”

One image of Swift on X was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended, according to a New York Times report.

The ban on searches came after White House called the fake images “alarming” and highlighting that social media companies have a responsibility to prevent the spread of such misinformation.

“This is very alarming. And so, we’re going to do what we can to deal with this issue,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news briefing, adding that Congress should take legislative action on the issue.

Lax enforcement against false images, possibly created by artificial intelligence (AI), too often disproportionately affects women, Jean-Pierre said.

“So while social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing, enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation, and non consensual, intimate imagery of real people,” Jean-Pierre said.

Swift was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2023 after launching a record-shattering global tour and becoming the world’s most-streamed musical artist.

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he has faced criticism for his own controversial posts, prompting many advertisers on the platform to pull back spending out of fear of being associated with harmful content.