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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

#131

Post by _cenw »

fvdessen wrote: post #96

What I find baffling as well is how casually people use 'whiteness' as if it was an intellectually valid concept. What does one expect to receive when asking for a picture of a white women ? A Swedish blonde ? Irish red-head ? A French brunette ? A Southern Italian ? A Lebanese ? An Irianian ? A Berber ? A Morrocan ? A Russian ? A Palestinian, A Greek, A Turk, An Arab ? Can anyone tell who of those is white or not an…

Don't forget that whiteness contracts and expands depending on the situation, location and year. It does fit in extremely well with an ever shrinking us against them that results from fascism. Even the German understanding of Aryan (and the race ranking below) was not very consistent and ever changing. They considered the Greek (and Italians) not white, and still looked up to a nonexistant ideal "historical" greek white person.

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

#132

Post by hajile »

fvdessen wrote: post #96

What I find baffling as well is how casually people use 'whiteness' as if it was an intellectually valid concept. What does one expect to receive when asking for a picture of a white women ? A Swedish blonde ? Irish red-head ? A French brunette ? A Southern Italian ? A Lebanese ? An Irianian ? A Berber ? A Morrocan ? A Russian ? A Palestinian, A Greek, A Turk, An Arab ? Can anyone tell who of those is white or not an…

I'm with you right up until the last part.

If they don't feel comfortable putting all White people in one group, why are they perfectly fine shoving all Asians, Hispanics, Africans, etc into their own specific groups?

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

#133

Post by ben_w »

willsmith72 wrote: post #37
WatchDog wrote: post #21

Google seem to be more concerned about generating images of racially diverse Nazis rather than about issues of not being able to generate white people.

tbh i think it's less a political issue than a technical/product management one what does a "board member" look like? probably you can benefit by offering more than 50 year old white man in suit. if that's what an ai trained on all human knowledge thinks, maybe we can do some adjustment what does a samurai warrior look like? probably is a little more race-related

> what does a samurai warrior look like? probably is a little more race-related

If you ask Hollywood, it looks like Tom Cruise with a beard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Last_Samurai.jpg

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

mrtksn wrote: post #87

Honestly, I'm baffled by the American keywordism and obsession with images. They seem to think that if they don't say certain words and show people from minorities in the marketing material the racism and discrimination will be solved and atrocities from the past will be forgiven. It only become unmanageable and builds up resentment. Anyway, maybe its a phase. Sometimes I wonder if the openly racist European&Asians w…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by throwaway118899 »

throw310822 wrote: post #14
kypro wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Asked to generate any image of people (British kings, American colonists, German WW2 soldiers (!), the founders of Google (!!), Roman centurions, Vikings, historical Popes, you name it) it would invariably generate them as women and/ or non-whites. 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. The w…

Oh and nobody cares that it did that. Google only took action once people started making images of black nazis.

This does feel too amazing not to be a purposeful middle finger to DEI efforts.

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

#136

Post by _cenw »

Panoramix wrote: post #109
fvdessen wrote: post #96

What I find baffling as well is how casually people use 'whiteness' as if it was an intellectually valid concept. What does one expect to receive when asking for a picture of a white women ? A Swedish blonde ? Irish red-head ? A French brunette ? A Southern Italian ? A Lebanese ? An Irianian ? A Berber ? A Morrocan ? A Russian ? A Palestinian, A Greek, A Turk, An Arab ? Can anyone tell who of those is white or not an…

Absolutely, it's such an American-centric way of thinking. Which given the context is really ironic.

It's not just US-centric, it is also just wrong. What's considered white in the US wasn't always the same, especially in the founding years.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

exitb wrote: post #106
dontupvoteme wrote: post #68

OpenAI already experienced this backlash when it was injecting words for diversity into prompts (hilariously if you asked for your prompt back it would include the words, and supposedly you could get it to render the extra words onto signs within the image). How could Google have made the same mistake but worse ?

DALL-E is still prompted with diversity in mind. It's just not over the top. People don't mind to receive diverse depictions when they make sense for a given context.

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by dorkwood »

fvdessen wrote: post #96

What I find baffling as well is how casually people use 'whiteness' as if it was an intellectually valid concept. What does one expect to receive when asking for a picture of a white women ? A Swedish blonde ? Irish red-head ? A French brunette ? A Southern Italian ? A Lebanese ? An Irianian ? A Berber ? A Morrocan ? A Russian ? A Palestinian, A Greek, A Turk, An Arab ? Can anyone tell who of those is white or not an…

Well I think the issue here is that it was hesitant to generate white people in any context. You could request, for example, a Medieval English king and it would generate black women and Asian men. I don't think your criticism really applies there.

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

#140

Post by fhd2 »

sycamoretrees wrote: post #22

why are we using image generators to represent actual history? If we want accuracy surely we can use actual documents that are not imagined by a bunch of code. If you want to write fanfic or whatever then just adjust the prompt

I think we're not even close technologically, but creating historically accurate (based on the current level of knowledge humanity has of history) depictions, environments and so on is, to me, one of the most _fascinating_ applications.

Insane amounts of research go into creating historical movies, games etc that are serious about getting it right. But to try and please everyone, they take lots of liberties, because they're creating a product for the masses. For that very same reason, we get tons of historical depictions of New York and London, but none of the medium sized city where I live.

The effort/cost that goes into historical accuracy is not reasonable without catering to the mass market, so it seems like a conundrum only lots of free time for a lot of people or automation could possibly break.

Not holding my breath that it's ever going to be technically possible, but boy do I see the appeal!

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