Fake images of Taylor Swift ,which made buzz on social media platforms last month, have reportedly began through a chatroom challenge on 4chan. 

A new study revealed that the challenge was traced to a forum on 4chan, an anonymous image bulletin board that has a history of distributing controversial content. 

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4chan Users Participate in Taylor Swift Deepfakes 

According to the report by Graphika, 4chan users created the deepfake photos as part of the "game" which challenged them to produce lewd and violent visuals of famous women, including celebrities to politicians. 

The rule also included that it must bypass the guardrails established by AI-powered image generator tools like Open AI's DALL-E, Microsoft Designer, and Bing Image Creator. 

"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," Graphika senior analyst, Christina Lopez G., stated. 

Moreover, the forum does not explicitly target Swift and she is not also considered as the most targeted public figure in the platform. Hence, Graphika concluded that it could harm anyone from celebrities to average people, even children. 

AI Advancement Boosts Deepfake Online 

On the other hand, OpenAI announced that the images of the global superstar were not generated using ChatGPT. According to the company, DALL-E and ChatGPT have safety guardrails that deny requests involving public figures or prompts for explicit content. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft stated that it is still investigating the images. Moreover, it promised that it has strengthened its "existing safety systems to further prevent our services from being misused to help generate images like them," a spokesperson explained. 

Swift's massive fanbase quickly took action on X, where the images were first uploaded, by flooding the #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag along with positive images. The social media platform also disabled Swift's name to be searchable during the height of controversy. 

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