White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday it is alarming that fake, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift spread across social media earlier this week and that Congress should pass a bill criminalizing the sharing of similar images.
Explicit images of the pop star, believed to be generated by artificial intelligence, spread like wildfire across X and other social media sites. One image drew more than 47 million views before the account that posted it was suspended, and the incident reignited calls for new legislation on the subject.
“We are alarmed by reports of the circulation of images that you just laid out — false images, to be more exact,” Jean-Pierre answered when asked if the president would support such legislation. “Social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, but we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and nonconsensual, intimate imagery of real people. Sadly, though, too often, we know that lack of enforcement disproportionately impacts women, and they also impact girls.”
The press secretary rattled off several directives the president has issued to federal agencies to study a responsible use of artificial intelligence but eventually stated that “there should be legislation, obviously, to deal with this issue.”
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“The president has taken action. Whether it is a task force, whether it’s Department of Justice, they are doing what it can with the 24/7 online assistance, and so we’re going to continue,” she continued. “Of course, Congress should take legislative inaction. That’s how you deal with some of these issues, obviously, but it is alarming to us, and we’re going to continue to do what we can.”
You can watch Friday’s briefing in full below.