White House officials are concerned in the wake of the high profile harassment of musician Taylor Swift using explicit “deepfake” images created in her likeness.

Deepfakes are AI generated images which create relatively realistic depictions of real-life people. Despite Artificial Intelligence (AI) booming in the past year or so, deepfakes have actually been a problem for a few years now.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the images “very alarming” and reportedly called on Congress to consider legislation on the issue.

At first, deepfakes were mostly made by superimposing a celebrity’s face over obscene videos and images with AI helping keep things looking smooth. Now with advances in generative AI, deepfakes can be made even more convincingly and with less source material to work with.

The reason the White House has become involved is due to lagging legislation on the issue. At present, AI is still a tech frontier (a “wild west” if you will) and both the creators and users of AI are still feeling out the technical, ethical, and legal limits of the technology.

The creation of deepfakes of a high-profile celebrity such as Taylor Swift will likely accelerate the decision-making process.

This is Niche Gamer Tech. In this column, we regularly cover tech and things related to the tech industry.