00:00Millions of Taylor Swift fans around the world were appalled last week when deepfake, sexually
00:10explicit images of hers went viral on the internet.
00:13Twitter, or X as it's now called, did act a little later and actually blocked search
00:20results when you typed in Taylor Swift so that the images could not spread further.
00:24But by the time they did that, it was actually too late because millions and millions of
00:29people had already seen those images.
00:32So the challenge here is, what is it that governments and tech giants can do to tackle
00:37this problem of deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence?
00:41This is the biggest challenge that we're probably facing today, which is why even the White
00:45House weighed in on Taylor Swift and said it was alarmed.
00:48We've seen a bipartisan group of US senators coming together and introducing a bill in
00:52the US Congress just days earlier, which seeks to punish those who generate this kind of
00:57fake content and who seek to distribute it as well.
01:01The Indian government has also issued a warning to social media platforms saying that they
01:05will be held responsible for any deepfakes on their platforms and they need to act in
01:09accordance with Indian rules.
01:11Because remember, it's not just women and girls who are vulnerable to this kind of deepfake
01:18pornography that we're seeing generated by AI because, you know, women are in any case
01:23at the receiving end of so much online abuse.
01:26This will make things worse.
01:27But there is much more at stake.
01:29There is also the impact it could have on countries, on democracies where elections
01:33are being held.
01:34Like India, like the United States, there was a deepfake of Joe Biden that went viral
01:38just days earlier and audio of his telling people not to come out and vote in the New
01:43Hampshire primary and it turned out to be completely fake.
01:46So the onus really lies on governments around the world to transcend any differences and
01:51on tech giants to come together and find quicker and more efficient ways to take down content
01:57like this and not to let it get so viral, you know, to a point where, like in the Taylor
02:03Swift case, 40-50 million people had already seen some images before they were taken down.
02:08What is the point of that?
02:09Is there a better, more efficient way that we can do this?
02:12That is something governments and tech giants need to focus on.
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