The country-turned-pop star Taylor Swift has commanded headlines for well over a year now with her record-breaking “Eras Tour” as well as her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce. Unfortunately, her image has also made the rounds in AI engines.

Deepfake pornography is already an emerging problem, but its seriousness resurfaced when explicit, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift went viral in late January. Only ten states currently have laws prohibiting deepfake pornography, but legislation is underway to ban it in several others, including Swift’s home state, Tennessee. According to attorney Carrie Goldberg, if Swift were to sue anyone, it would probably have to be focused on the AI companies themselves. USA Today reports,

It’s possible that the faked images could result in criminal charges, but it’s more likely that victims get justice by suing companies involved in the images’ creation or proliferation. That’s according to Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights attorney who has taken on tech companies and represented clients who were victims of nonconsensual porn, stalking and harassment and, now, deepfake pornography.

Goldberg also notes that lawsuits are a much more practical solution for a wealthy celebrity than they are for someone with less influence, who might also be the victim of deepfake porn.

Were Taylor Swift explicit AI photos illegal? Can she sue? (usatoday.com)

This leads to an underlying debate over responsibility. Who shoulders the blame primarily for the proliferation of deepfakes: The user or the company who provided the product? With most states still not banning deepfake pornography, the lawsuits will most likely turn to the AI progenitors and the Big Tech companies making the abuse of this technology so easy.

Looking forward, it’s hard not to see how deepfakes will stop becoming more profuse across the internet. Everything from personal reputation to reliability in the political and public sphere could be at stake. Perhaps some of the threat can be mitigated by law, but in the future, it might just get all the harder to distinguish fact from fiction.