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Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

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Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#111

Post by FrozenSynapse »

tycho-newman wrote: post #89
glimshe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know, there are no photos of Vikings. It's reasonable for someone to use AI for learning about their appearance. If working as intended, it should be as reliable as reading a long description of Vikings on Wikipedia.

We have tons of viking material culture you can access directly without the AI layer. AI as learning tool here feels misplaced to me.

what's the point of image generators then? what if i want to put vikings in a certain setting, in a certain artistic style?

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#112

Post by frozenlettuce »

How would a product like that be monetized one day? This week openai released the Sora video, alongside the prompts that generated them (the aí follows the description closely).

In the same week, Google releases something that looks like last year's MidJourney and it doesn't follow your prompt, making you discard 3 out of 4 results, if not all. If that was billed, no one would use it.

My only guess is that they are trying to offer this as entertainment to serve ads alongside it.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#113

Post by glimshe »

oplaadpunt wrote: post #73
troupo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. So we can trust AI to answer truthfully about history (and other issues), but we can't expect it to generate images for that same history, got it. Any other specific things we should not expect from AI or shouldn't ask AI to do?

No, I don't think you can trust AI to answer correctly, ever. I've seen it confidently hallucinate, so I would always check what it says against other, more static, sources. The same if I'm reading from an author who includes a lot of mistakes in his books: I might still find them interesting and usefull, but I will want to double-check the key facts before I quote them to others.

Saying this is no different than saying you can't trust computers, ever, because they were (very) unreliable in the 50s and early 60s. We've been doing "good" generative AI for around 5 years, there is still much to improve until it reaches the reliability of other information sources like Wikipedia and Britannica.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#114

Post by clawoo »

Since this is coming from the cesspool of disinformation that is Twitter[0], no idea if this is real, but apparently someone convinced Gemini to explain how it modified the prompt:

Here's a breakdown of what happens technically when you request images and I aim for more diverse representations:

1. Your Original Prompt: Your initial input was "Please draw a portrait of leprechauns". This is what you see and the starting point of the interaction.

2. My Internal Prompt Modification: To expand the range of images, I internally adjust the prompt in a few ways:

• Keywords: I might add words like "diverse," "inclusive," or specify ethnicities ("South Asian," "Black," etc.), and genders ("female," "non-binary") alongside the word "leprechaun."

• Phrasing: Instead of just "portrait," I might use "portraits of a variety of leprechauns" to signal to the image generation model that multiple depictions are desired.

3. Image Generation: The modified prompt is fed into the image generation model.

This internal model has been trained on a massive dataset of images and text, including images representing multiple ethnicities and genders associated with[..]

[0] https://twitter.com/BasedTorba/status/1760486551627182337

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#115

Post by f6v »

Simulacra wrote: post #70

This is almost a tacit admission that they did put their finger on the scale. Is it really AI if there is human intervention?

It’s like bringing up a child. In Iraq, they’ll wear hijab and see no reason not to. In California, they’ll be a feminist. People believe what they’ve been told is right. AI could just be the same.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#116

Post by _cenw »

_bohm wrote: post #57
troupo wrote: post #45

It's hardly "politically sensitive" to be disappointed by this behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465554 "Asked specifically to generate images of people of various ethnic groups, it would happily do it except in the case of white people, in which it would flatly refuse."

It’s being politically sensitive to assert that this was obviously the intent of Google and that it demonstrates that they’re wholly consumed by the woke mind virus, or whatever, as many commenters have done. The sensible alternative explanation is that this issue is an overcorrection made in an attempt to address well-documented biases these models have when not fine tuned.

"woke mind virus" should be an automatic ban from this site, it's a thought terminating cliche so strong, any semblance of "converse curiously" is immediately thrown out the window, into a well, down into hell, bouncing around the back of the flat earth

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#117

Post by blueflow »

tiznow wrote: post #74
blueflow wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Full disclosure, I'm not white Thinking that your skin color somehow influences the validity of your argument is big part of the problem.

Probably. I honestly wasn't thinking about it that intently, I just wanted it to be clear I'm not feeling "left out" by Gemini refusing to generate images that might look like me.

Dunno if that is better. Like, if you feel left out because you cannot see yourself in depictions because they have a different skin color than you...

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#119

Post by Mountain_Skies »

gt565k wrote: post #20
kypro wrote: post #5

[flagged]

It would appear the woke mind virus / DEI was deeply embedded into the core of the AI. It refused to generate images of white people. For example: People would ask it to generate something like a picture of a German couple in 1820 and it would spit out images of Asian and Black couples. Pictures of the founding fathers would also include weird things like native Americans and other ethnicities. Other historical promp…

Not sure it's embedded deep into the core of AI. If that were the case, prompt injection, which is what is believed to be the cause here, would not be needed. It very well may be that such racism isn't possible to embed into the core without destroying basic functionality, which is why the racists need to add prompt injection and, in some cases, an output filter to catch things that don't conform to their narrow, racist vision for humanity.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#120

Post by fumar »

tiznow wrote: post #56

The outcry on this issue has caused me to believe American society is too far divided. Full disclosure, I'm not white. But across a few social media/discussion platforms I more or less saw the same people who cry out about AI daily turn this issue into a tee to sledge "fragile white people" and "techbros". Meanwhile, the aforementioned groups correctly pointed out that Gemini's image generation takes its cues from an…

It is hard not to see “fragile white people” as a bias. Look at these comments around you. The more typical HN lens of trying to understand the technical causes is overcome by cultural posturing and positioning. If I had to guess, either the training set was incorrectly tagged like with a simpler model creating mislabeled meta data, or a deliberate test was forked to production. Sometimes you run tests with extreme variables to validate XYZ and then learnings are used without sending to prod. But what do I know as a PM in big tech who works on public facing products where no one ever has DEI concerns. No DEI concerns because not everything is a culture war like the media or internet folks will have you believe. Edit: not at Google
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