White House calls explicit AI-generated Taylor Swift images 'alarming,' urges Congress to act

The White House reacted Friday to the explicit, AI-generated images of music superstar Taylor Swift that had gone viral this week, calling it "alarming" and leaning on Congress for a legislative crackdown.

"We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of images… of false images to be more exact. And it is alarming," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the White House press briefing. "So while social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and non-consensual, intimate imagery of real people."

Jean-Pierre said the "lax enforcement" of non-consensual pornographic imagery that surfaces online "disproportionately impacts women" and "girls sadly," saying they are the "overwhelming targets of online harassment and also abuse."

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"So the president is committed, as you know, to ensuring we reduce the risk of generative AI producing images like through his latest executive order that we announced just in the fall of last year. So this problem is not new," the Biden spokeswoman continued. "And it's one that the Biden-Harris administration has been prioritizing since day one. We have taken this very seriously. Again, this is alarming to us. As you know, he launched a task force to address online harassment and abuse… The Department of Justice launched the first national 24/7 helpline for survivors of image-based sexual abuse."

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When asked whether there should be legislation to combat such AI-generated imagery,