
Fake and graphic images of Taylor Swift started with AI challenge
CBSN
The fake images of Taylor Swift that spread like wildfire on social media in late January likely began as a chatroom challenge to bypass filters meant to stop people from creating pornography with artificial intelligence, a new study finds.
The images of the pop star can be traced to a forum on 4chan, an online image bulletin board with a history of sharing conspiracy theories, hate speech and other controversial content, according to the report by Graphika, a firm that analyzes social networks.
4chan users who created the images of Swift did so as part of a "game" of sorts to see if they could craft lewd and sometimes violent visuals of famous women, from singers to politicians, Graphika said. The firm detected a message thread on 4chan that encouraged users to try to bypass guardrails established by AI-powered image generators tools including OpenAI's DALL-E, Microsoft Designer and Bing Image Creator.