"Alarming, Terrible": Satya Nadella On Taylor Swift's Deepfake Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Monday expressed concern over the recent rise in AI-generated sexually-explicit deepfake videos and images of celebrities, calling the trend "alarming and terrible".

In an interview to NBC news, the chief executive was asked about the fake pornographic images of US pop sensation Taylor Swift that went viral on social media.

Mr Nadella emphasised the need for a quick response to such incidents. “I think it behooves us to move fast on this," he said, adding that "guardrails" were needed to ensure only safe content is produced online.

“I would say two things: One, is again I go back to what I think's our responsibility, which is all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that there's more safe content that's being produced. And there's a lot to be done and a lot being done there. But it is about global, societal — you know, I'll say, convergence on certain norms. And we can do — especially when you have law and law enforcement and tech platforms that can come together — I think we can govern a lot more than we think— we give ourselves credit for,” a report in The Verge quoted him as saying.

The report also claimed that the images could possibly have been generated using Microsoft Designer image generator. 

Social media was flooded on Thursday with deepfake images depicting the 34-year-old singer-songwriter in sexually suggestive poses and clothing, sparking widespread outrage.

Ms Swift was reportedly "furious" after the fake nude images were circulated and is likely to consider legal action against the site responsible for creating the photos.

The photos were also shared on X, formerly Twitter, prompting the company to remove the content from its platform. Later, searches for the singer's name on X generated an error message.

“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them. We're closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed," the company said in a post.