The year 2023 was spectacular for the 34-year-old Taylor Swift, the sequined superstar whose Eras concert tour spanned five continents and became not only critically acclaimed but the highest grossing tour of all time, surpassing $1 billon. Billboard magazine described it as “the must-see blockbuster of the year,” a music and fashion showcase.
Taylor was everywhere, a cultural phenomenon, an Elvis-like presence with millions of followers — 282.8 million on Instagram; 95 million on Twitter — who banded together as “Swifties.” For young women she was more than a performer; she was a warrior of independence and heartbreak. Time Magazine named her “person of the year,” the first selected because of arts achievement, the first woman recognized more than once.
And then 2024 dawned. When she started attending her boyfriend’s football games, the cameras loved her presence but some fans complained bitterly about her hogging the screen. Around the same time, conservative media began to float preposterous conspiracy theories that the U.S. government was using her to block the path of Donald Trump.
But late January brought a crash to the soaring Swift moment: Dozens of artificial intelligence-generated deepfake pornographic images of the demure Swift appeared on various sites, especially Twitter. She was explicitly nude, incredibly realistic and seen by 45 million viewers, with 24,000 reposts before the images were removed after 17 hours.
AI, now almost as pervasive as Swift herself, had struck its most high-profile target ever.
Allie McKenna, a personal stylist from Brooklyn, New York, has been a “Swifty” for 17 years. Most recently she saw Swift in concert in Los Angeles. But........