The AI Threat (Taylor’s Version)

Howdy, Meteor readers,

This email almost didn’t make it to you today. This morning, I woke up and saw that Calvin Klein launched a new campaign featuring Idris Elba, and knowing that my day could not get any better, I went back to bed.

But it did, in fact, get better. I went down an Idris Elba rabbit hole (recommend), and found that the actor/model/DJ/rapper is also the face of a campaign aimed at pushing the British government to ban the sale of “zombie-style” knives, the weapon of choice for young people committing knife crimes (which are currently on the rise there).

In today’s newsletter, we take a look into non-consensual, AI-generated pornography. Plus Florida’s latest attack on trans residents, dueling rappers, and the death of an icon.

Buying a CK coat,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Karma is the girls in the seats: Last week, Xwitter was flooded with pornographic images of Taylor Swift, all of which were AI-generated deepfakes. The response from her fanbase was immediate, with thousands of Swifties reporting and burying the images online with a level of coordination that military tactical units will someday study. And while I’ll take every opportunity to write about Swifties saving the day, this incident has also brought to the forefront the pervasiveness and dangers of AI porn.

Swift certainly isn’t the first person to be targeted by the dark forces that produce AI porn. Just a few days before false images of Swift spread online, actress Xochitl Gomez, who’s still a minor, discovered that her face had been edited into sexually explicit images and circulated on Xwitter. Gomez has been trying to get the images removed without success. (Swifties, activate!) Meanwhile, Xwitter put a temporary block on using the search words “Taylor” and “Swift” less than a day after those images went viral.

TAYLOR SWIFT IN NEW YORK EARLIER THIS MONTH. (PHOTO BY GOTHAM VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Swift herself is considering legal action (and Missouri recently introduced the Taylor Swift Act), potentially bringing the kind of high-profile attention that could be a major tool in the fight against AI-generated porn. But court cases take time, and this crime is proliferating fast. AP reported in December that 143,000 new deepfake videos—many featuring underaged girls—were posted online in 2023 alone, more than in all previous years combined. (The tech to make these kinds of videos has been available to general users since 2017; there was even a now-defunct app called DeepNude that made it as easy as pushing a button.) In an interview with Slate, Sophie Maddocks, a cyber sexual violence researcher, explained that in a seven-month span in 2023, “there was a ten-fold increase of AI-generated nude images online,” which victimized preteen boys as well as young girls.

While there is a federal bill on the table that would criminalize the production of deepfakes, Maddox calls the current legal protections in place—including a handful of state bills—a “patchwork in terms of civil and criminal recourse.” Victims have little to no options unless they can rpay the exorbitant lawyer fees and spend the time it takes to scrub these images from the internet—which platforms like Facebook and Xwitter aren’t in a rush to do.

Maddox also points to an issue that feminist technologists have long called out: What would it look like “if we had created these AI tools in a social environment that did center consent and that did prioritize consent”? Technological developments that consider the implications for those most likely to be harmed? Imagine that!

AND:

• In a moment when Gazans need humanitarian aid the most, several nations, including the US and Britain, have announced a suspension of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The announcement comes on the heels of a charge by Israeli leadership that 12 UNRWA workers were allegedly involved in the October 7th Hamas-led attack on Israeli civilians. The commissioner-general of the UNRWA is currently investigating these allegations, and the UN has reportedly fired a majority of the workers named in the accusation.

• A team of researchers believes they may have discovered the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane in a section of the Pacific Ocean.

• On Saturday, thousands of people flooded the streets of several cities across Kenya, to protest a recent wave of gender-based violence in which more than a dozen women were killed. It was reportedly the largest “anti-femicide” demonstration the country has ever seen.

PROTESTORS IN KISUMU, KENYA. (PHOTO BY BRIAN ONGORO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• The Florida DMV will no longer allow drivers to update the gender on their licenses, stating that any changes will require proof that the gender marker requested is in line with the applicant’s biological sex at birth. Leave it to Florida to find every way possible to exact more cruelty.

• Elon Musk’s company Nueralink has implanted a microchip in an unnamed living person’s brain, with the eventual goal of allowing humans to use thoughts to control things like a phone or computer. Which sign of the end times is this again?

• ICYMI, Nikki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion are having the first significant rap beef since Drake dropped “Back to Back,” and I don’t think it’s a question where Thee Meteor stands on this one. Don’t you ever grab a mic and think that me and you competing—put it on my tombstone!!

• Reproductive rights legend, former Planned Parenthood president and Supermajority founder Cecile Richards announced over the weekend that she is living with brain cancer. But she’s also still working—her newest, deeply needed project is Charley, an abortion-access chatbot.

• Chita Rivera has died at the age of 91. Rivera was a powerhouse, a singular force, and a Broadway icon. Her performance of Anita in the original production of West Side Story served as a north star for so many Latinx performers—and remains the best iteration of that role.

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