X Bans Any Taylor Swift Search Results From App After AI-Generated, Pornographic Images Of The Singer Surfaced

Don’t bother typing “Taylor Swift” into your X search bar, because nothing will pop up. That’s because the app banned nearly all Swift-related searches from yielding results.

Earlier this week, AI-generated, pornographic images of Swift circulated on the platform, as well as other social media sites. They depicted the world-renowned singer in red body paint and committing sexual acts with Kansas City Chiefs fans. The disturbing pictures surfaced less than a week before the Chiefs, including her boyfriend Travis Kelce, play in the AFC Championship Game against the Baltimore Ravens.

SAG-AFTRA, a powerful union in the entertainment industry, released a statement condemning the images.

“The development and dissemination of fake images — especially those of a lewd nature — without someone’s consent must be made illegal,” SAG-AFTRA said. “As a society, we have it in our power to control these technologies, but we must act now before it is too late. SAG-AFTRA continues to support legislation by Congressman Joe Morelle, the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, to make sure we stop exploitation of this nature from happening again. We support Taylor, and women everywhere who are the victims of this kind of theft of their privacy and right to autonomy.” 

Swift Has Not Yet Said Anything About These Images

Morelle (D-NY) introduced this bill in May of 2023, but the legislation has not seen any developments since then.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also issued a statement after the images surfaced, saying that the government would do whatever it could to stop things like this from happening again.

“While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing, enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation, and non consensual, intimate imagery of real people,” Jean-Pierre said.

X CEO Elon Musk has yet to make any sort of statement on the matter. 

Should you go on X, you can still search “Taylor Swift singer” and get results. However, most of those results simply provide coverage of this story from other outlets.

Swift has not commented publicly either, which is perfectly understandable. Some unverified reports suggest she’ll pursue legal action, but no one knows for sure.