The Rise Of Deepfakes & The Inappropriate Morphing Insanity Attached With It: The Taylor Swift Deepfake Case
Photo: Taylor Smith
As the internet has become a part of our daily lives as we count passive scrolling as hobby! It has already become a concern as it has manipulated the individual life of people but the case of deepfakes is a danger to the society for spreading misleading information or unethical misinformation which are not traceable and has no legal frameworks yet, thus the evil part of the Internet age. In simpler terms : A deepfake is an image, or a video or audio recording, which has been perfectly edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else to create a controversy and set afire of accusations in the social media conscious society. The creators create it in a way that makes it look authentic. Deepfakes are not real and introducing itself by morphing the public figures photos or videos first to torment their social image. The “deep”, this half of the term is specifically influenced by deep learning or machine learning using artificial neural networks with multiple layers of algorithms to make it look real and present it in front of public eyes.
A study in 2023 witnessed that there has been a 550% rise in the creation of doctored images since 2019, fueled by the emergence of AI and machine learning. Deepfake pornography makes up 98% of all deepfake videos online last year as stated by The State Of Deepfakes published last year.
Taylor Swift Case in not a new story, where the famous artist is depicted in sexually suggestive positions were viewed millions of times on X, previously known as Twitter, before being removed. One such photo, shared by a single user, was seen more than 45 million times before the account was suspended. But the photo has been circulated rampantly elsewhere in the internet world. Although Swift has not spoken about it in the public but according to the Daily Mail her team is considering legal actions against the site that uploaded these misleading images.
According to BBC, US politicians are demanding new laws to criminalize the creation of deepfake images, after explicit morphed photos of Taylor Swift were circulated and viewed online. Republican Congressman Tom Kean Jr agreed, saying that it is “clear that AI technology is advancing faster than the necessary guardrails”. However, in the UK,sharing of deepfake pornography became illegal as per Online Safety Act in 2023. It also includes acts like cyber-flashing – sending unsolicited sexual imagery online as punishable offense. The Equality and Human Rights Commission welcomed the law with its First draft code in 9th November 2023, in the UK.
By Shivani Rath