X appears to have blocked searches for Taylor Swift keywords but is easily bypassed

X appears to have blocked searches for Taylor Swift in response to a fake AI-based image of the world-famous recording artist that recently surfaced on the site. Now, if you search for "TaylorSwift" or "TaylorSwiftAI" on X (formerly Twitter), you may see an "something went wrong" message.

After Platformer's Casey Newton spotted the change, we tried a few other keyword searches. If X was intended to block searches of AI-generated illegal images of Swift, it doesn't appear to have gone very far.

This is because if you come across a blocked search term and decide to put in the minimum effort to try other terms, you can easily bypass it. For example, "TaylorAISwift" or simply placing quotes around her name will return results. Even adding a word to a seemingly blocked search term will get results. What's more, while the post may be blocked from search, the media associated with it apparently isn't -- click on the "Media" tab to see a slew of images.

There are reports that Taylor Swift is considering taking legal action against the website that hosted the images. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called what Deepfake did "shocking, very scary" in an interview with NBC Nightly News yesterday, and said he believed artificial intelligence companies need to "move quickly" to build better protection mechanisms.