Political leaders in the United States called to criminalise the practice of creating deepfake photos and videos after such explicit images of singer Taylor Swift were distributed this week on social media platforms, The Guardian reported on Friday.

“What’s happened to Taylor Swift is nothing new. For yrs, women have been targets of deepfakes [without] their consent,” Yvette D Clarke, a Democrat congresswoman for New York, wrote on X.

With the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), creating deepfakes is easier and cheaper she said, adding that the issue should bring people to come together to solve it.

The images of the US popstar has been distributed across social media including X and Telegram which were seen by millions this week.

Read: Indian actress Rashmika Mandanna calls her deepfake ‘extremely scary’

X said in a statement: “Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them.”

While almost all of the images appear to have been removed, one photo of Swift was viewed a reported 47 million times before being taken down.

In May 2023, he unveiled the proposed Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, which would make it illegal to share deepfake pornography without consent. His proposed legislation has not yet become law.

Democrat congressman Joseph Morelle while condemning the Swift images, described them as “sexual exploitation”.

Meanwhile, Swift has not reacted publicly about the doctored images while her publicist also not replied to a request for comment.