4Chan Users Flood the Internet With Explicit A.I. Taylor Swift Images
Following 4th Grammy Win
On Sunday evening, Taylor Swift made history, winning Album of the Year for the 4th time. And, what was cut out to be a night of celebration, debuting her new album, Tortured Poets Department, was quickly met with a new type of propaganda.
A series of explicit images, generated using A.I. began circulating on social media. And, after a little digging, it seems as though they originated as a “game” on the internet’s troll hub, 4chan.
4Chan’s “Bypass Game”
4chan is known (to Wikipedia) as “an anonymous English-language imageboard website hosting a wide variety of topics”, such as:
- Video games
- Pop culture
- Television
- Fitness
- Politics
- Anime
But, if you know anything about internet culture, you know it’s often used for much more destructive activities. And, what it really is.
The internet’s biggest hub for trolls.
Shortly after Taylor Swift’s Grammy win, 4chan users began participating in a “game” where they aimed to outsmart filters and create convincing explicit AI-generated images.
Nudity, pornography, and explicit images are not permitted by public A.I. image software but can be tricked with the right prompting.
Taylor Swift wasn’t the only victim
According to Rolling Stone, the research firm Graphika said images circulating social media were sourced back to 4chan, where users had made a game out of coming up with prompts that would bypass A.I. safeguards.
And, according to senior Graphika analyst Cristina López G., “pornographic” photos of other celebrities had been created as well.
“While viral pornographic pictures of Taylor Swift have brought mainstream attention to the issue of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images, she is far from the only victim.
Cristina went on to outline who, what, and how easily anyone can be targeted.
In the 4chan community where these images originated, she isn’t even the most frequently targeted public figure. This shows that anyone can be targeted in this way, from global celebrities to school children.”
This gamified activity vividly demonstrates the challenges and motivations surrounding the creation of malicious AI-generated images.
Responsibility by Social Media Companies
According to tech publication 404, many of the images made their way to Twitter/X, which has come to embrace free speech in recent years, allowing all forms of content to be distributed.
This has opened up public discussion about the ramifications of free speech, censorship, and the responsibilities of social media companies to enhance their safeguards to prevent the spread of these harmful and non-consensual images.
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