Anyone could be a victim of ‘deepfakes’. But there’s a reason Taylor Swift is a target

‘Swift is also a person who many on the right seek to humiliate, degrade, and punish – the same aims as the creators of deepfake porn.’ Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Taylor Swift is having quite a month. The singer-songwriter saw her image in disgusting deepfake porn images that were circulated online, prompting a necessary and overdue conversation on how AI and deepfake porn is used to harass, humiliate, degrade, threaten, extort and punish (mostly) women. And then her boyfriend, the football player Travis Kelce, saw his team make it to the Super Bowl, which set off a wave of rightwing anti-Swift hysteria and conspiracy theorizing. The most powerful pop star in the world has everything going for her – and has also become an avatar for widespread anxieties about female power, sexuality and gender politics.

Deepfake porn brings up a whole host of moral, ethical, philosophical and legal questions. Those questions grow even more complicated when applied to celebrities. A famous 1988 first amendment free speech case in the US pitted the pornographic magazine Hustler against the homophobic and misogynist evangelical activist Jerry Falwell.