Maritimers debate online privacy following fake, AI-generated Taylor Swift photos

When explicit and deep-faked images of Taylor Swift surfaced on social media over the weekend, it started a conversation about what this might mean for the online privacy of everyday folks.

"I followed that story very closely,” said Anna Manley, a Sydney-based lawyer who also presents on cybersecurity issues.

Most people have at least a few pictures of themselves online.

Though she says the rich and famous like Swift are more likely to be targeted, Manley says what was done to the pop singer could serve as a wake-up call for the rest of us.

"Because a lot of what we do is based on our faces,” Manley said. “Our ID, your face ID on your phone for example — videoconferencing."

Others weighed in with a harsher take.

"This is going to get worse, and one of the reasons for that is there are literally no laws in Canada to deal with artificial intelligence,” said digital anthropologist Giles Crouch.

Crouch said the country's privacy law is more than 25-years-old.

He adds that there is a privacy and AI law update, Bill C-27, that he feels would help fix a lot of these issues, but it has been, in his words, “languishing” in the House of Commons for three years.

"It would give tools to police departments and to court systems in order to address these kind of deep-fake issues and other problems with artificial intelligence — especially privacy,” Crouch said.

He also pointed out that there have been Canadians targeted by this type of thing in recent years.

"It's going to take citizen pressure on the lawmakers in order to get these laws updated, but in the meantime, use the internet at your own risk,” Crouch said.

However, others pointed out that AI can be used for good, too.

"For example, artificial intelligence has been used in the processing of images for cancer diagnoses,” Manley said.

Manley added that, while it's natural to focus on the negative, over-legislation may not be the answer either.

"Regulating it I think, as a knee-jerk reaction to incidents like this, is going to cause us to slow down because Canada can regulate it, but other countries aren't going to regulate it,” she said.