Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Supreme Court will hear arguments about abortion pill mifepristone in late March, MacKenzie Scott sells a quarter of her Amazon shares, and Taylor Swift AI deepfakes are a warning sign. Have a thoughtful Tuesday.
– Scary sign. Last week, AI-generated sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift went viral. One was reportedly seen as many as 45 million times before X banned most searches for “Taylor Swift” on the platform over the weekend.
The ordeal was a scary sign of the technological risks that lie ahead for women—and how ill-prepared tech companies are to address them.
Deepfake porn, in which AI generates nonconsensual nude or pornographic photos and videos of real people, is a growing problem that undermines the consent and bodily autonomy of its victims. Victims aren’t just celebrities; high school boys created and circulated nonconsensual imagery of female classmates in October. Recent advances in consumer AI platforms have made the longstanding problem even more prevalent.
According to the news outlet 404 Media, 4chan users made nonconsensual celebrity nude images, including the ones of Swift, using the Microsoft-owned AI text-to-image platform Designer. While Microsoft’s terms of service prohibit nonconsensual nude images, users relied on loopholes, including one that allowed those images to be generated when celebrities’ names were slightly misspelled. Microsoft has since eliminated the loophole, 404 Media reported.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told NBC in an interview on Friday that it is the company’s responsibility to “move fast” on fixing the “alarming” images and the issues they raise. The subject even reached the White House, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a briefing on Friday that social media companies must enforce their own rules to prevent the spread of deepfakes. The Biden administration “know[s] that lax enforcement disproportionately impacts women…and girls, who are the overwhelming targets of online harassment,” she said.
The solutions companies have presented so far, however, are far from perfect. X, which took 19 hours to suspend the accounts that posted the images, eventually blocked searches for Swift’s name. That kind of fix penalizes the victim, suppressing their genuine work and profile as platforms scramble to quell the spread of deepfakes.
Swift’s massive fan base helped bury the AI images. Swifties reported them en masse and overwhelmed search terms with normal photos of the pop star, resources that the average victim—whether a lesser-known celebrity or a normal, non-famous person—doesn’t have.
That this happened to one of the world’s most powerful women is terrifying; where does that leave the rest of us? At the same time, the awful Swift images finally got leaders in business and government—those with the power to prevent this from happening to other women—to pay attention.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Up for argument. The Supreme Court set March 26 as the date it will hear arguments for and against the prescription and distribution of mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill. The case targets FDA policies that allow the pill to be prescribed online and distributed through the mail and at brick and mortar stores. Politico
- Pushing the needle. President Joe Biden announced new measures on Monday, the 15th anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to ensure equitable pay among federal workers. For example, the government will no longer determine a federal employee's salary based on their current or past pay. AP
- Thin ice. Switzerland’s Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Kamila Velieva from figure skating for four years after the Russian skater tested positive for trimetazidine just a day after she led her team to the gold at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The ban is retroactive and will end next year, but the 2022 gold medal will now go to the USA, which placed second. Velieva previously claimed that the medicine, which helps more blood flow to the heart, was her grandfather's and she'd taken it accidentally. New York Times
- Power down. GM dealers are pressuring the company to prioritize hybrid cars as CEO Mary Barra's fully-electric vehicle push gains little momentum. Barra appears open to the idea of adding hybrids to GM's lineup, but the company reportedly hasn't committed to changing anything yet. Wall Street Journal
- The big sell. A regulatory filing revealed that MacKenzie Scott sold 65.3 million shares of Amazon stock last year, worth more than $10.4 billion at Friday’s closing price. Scott has already donated $16.5 billion of her total fortune, and said she “will keep at it until the safe is empty” after signing a pledge to give away most of her wealth in 2019 . Coins2Day
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Blizzard Entertainment named Johanna Faries as president. Leaf Homes appointed Scarlett O'Sullivan chief financial officer. The Institute for Women's Policy Research announced Jamila K. Taylor as president and chief executive officer.
ON MY RADAR
Joni Mitchell to make Grammy debut performance at 80 BBC
Not a priest, not a man, but ready to run Fordham New York Times
Opinion: The woman best placed to replace Rishi Sunak Bloomberg
PARTING WORDS
"I really hope that my story will help somebody to believe in themselves and to keep going and keep fighting and keep doing their best."
—Tennis player Aryna Sabalenka on winning her second consecutive Australian Open
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