The White House said sexually-explicit AI-generated images of pop star Taylor Swift were concerning and that Congress should consider legislation to address fake, abusive images that are proliferating online.
Social media networks also need to do more to prevent the spread of the images, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.
“It is alarming,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “So 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.”
Fake, sexually explicit images of Swift have flooded X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in recent weeks, racking up millions of views and tens of thousands of reposts. In other instances, images of Swift and other celebrities have been manipulated to make it seem like they were endorsing commercial products.
Read more: Understanding Deepfakes and the Taylor Swift Images
X has said it is removing the images and taking action against the accounts involved in spreading them. But the controversy has inspired bipartisan calls from members of Congress for new safeguards.
Jean-Pierre said short of that, President Joe Biden was working with AI companies on unilateral efforts that would watermark generated images to make them easier to identify as fakes. The Biden administration has also appointed a task force to address online harassment and abuse, while the Justice Department created a hotline for those victimized by image-based sexual abuse.