this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Google suspends Gemini from making AI images of people after a backlash complaining it was 'woke'::After users complained Google's Gemini had gone "woke," the company said it will pause the image-generating feature of people while working on fixes.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (3 children)

To be fair, the aggrieved images generated by the AI included people of various ethnicity pictured as Nazi soldiers.

I don't know though... to me, it seems weird that the criticism is focused on "wokeness" and misguided inclusivity. Shouldn't people be more concerned about these images being the result of demoing a technology for falsifying historic records in a hitherto unthinkable scale?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There was an article posted here yesterday that said this was the problem.

Now that Google has taken action to help alleviate the issue, we now have the problem of "wokeness".

Any and all issues calling out wokeness as part of any problem immediately loses all credibility to me. If wanting to include other ethnicities in something, even if it's just to make the people with the money look better, I'm all for it.

Being inclusive in any way is league's better than the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Any and all issues calling out wokeness as part of any problem immediately loses all credibility to me.

Agree.

If wanting to include other ethnicities in something, even if it's just to make the people with the money look better, I'm all for it.

Disagree, it's reasonable to criticize green, pink, whathaveyou washing even if there are many other worse things a company can do (discrimination, etc). I also think it's reasonable to find it offensive to depict Nazi Germany as a beacon of inclusivity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If wanting to include other ethnicities in something, even if it's just to make the people with the money look better, I'm all for it.

“This is great, I can’t wait to start working on projects”

“Oh, we didn’t hire you because of your potential to actually contribute. We just needed a black one to make us look good”

See how stupid that is?

Call me crazy but I think people should be hired, find mates/friends, and associate with people based on who they are, not what color their skin is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

But they are falsifying historically generated images because of wokeness. That's the cause. Insertion of diversity when it shouldn't be there.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago

It's fake art. Don't worry about it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I mean, they went out of their way to generate black Popes

Probably not what you want

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

If you asked it to show you a picture of a Caucasian pope, you got a lecture. If you then tried to make it generate a Caucasian pope, it first failed, and then refused claiming it won't create imaged based on certain race or ethnicity.

So yeah, that's going a bit too far. This twitter thread is full of weird examples.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That thread is some wild shit. Certainly makes me stop and think about some things. Which is good.

So like, what's wrong with showing a black Pope? Why should we assume hypothetical Popes can't be black? Pope Francis appointed the first black cardinal, Wilton Daniel Gregory. It's bound to happen one day. And I don't think it hurts for people to be presented with that possibility. I think that's good. Of course the Catholic church is problematic but this isn't about that. Like, asking for a pic of someone in a position of power should absolutely show diverse people.

But like.. In terms of historical accuracy it seems just as insane to show ethnically diverse Vikings as it would be to show ethnically diverse Mongols, Cheyenne, Zulus, Bolsheviks, etc. Right? Now if I ask for pics of fantasy-world Vikings (etc) then go for it.

Asking for a scientist in his lab...yeah I'm ok with AI going, "fuck you, women can be scientists too, sexist asshole." 😆 Is it truly necessary to reflect someone's bias back at them? And so what if it shows all women? If it does, now the men asking know how it feels to feel unrepresented. (It might be problematic if men are never, ever, ever shown no matter hoe many times you ask).

Speaking of, I can imagine it would be fucking annoying for my identity to be ignored by AI. More of the same shit after years of being underrepresented everywhere else, right? So hey great, don't fall into the trap of training the AI on biased data and having it spit out biased results.

Of course ...elves and pixies and gnomes apparently are all white... Smh.

Imagine growing up in a world where comics and media and everything else never shows anyone like you. Fuck that. That's fucking dumb. And boring. Show me different people. I like different people.

But this Gemini thing? I mean ok, It's good they tried to be more inclusive. But I think they did it kind of ham-handedly. They need to go back and think about this quite a bit harder. It feels like a forced afterthought. It's giving "oh, shit, everyone is white, quick, slap some diversity on it so we don't get in trouble" vibes.