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Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

theverge.com

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

#171

Post by bondarchuk »

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…

A Swedish blonde ? yes Irish red-head ? yes A French brunette ? yes A Southern Italian ? yes A Lebanese ? no An Irianian ? no A Berber ? no A Morrocan ? no A Russian ? yes A Palestinian no, A Greek yes, A Turk no, An Arab ? no

You might quibble with a few of them but you might also (classic example) quibble over the exact definition of "chair". Just because it's a hairy complicated subjective term subject to social and policital dynamics does not make it entirely meaningless. And the difficulty of drawing an exact line between two things does not mean that they are the same. Image generation based on prompts is so super fuzzy and rife with multiple-interpretability that I don't see why the concept of "whiteness" would present any special difficulty.

I offer my sincere apologies that this reply is probably a bit tasteless, but I firmly believe the fact that any possible counterargument can only be tasteless should not lead to accepting any proposition.

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

#172

Post by steveBK123 »

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…

You are getting far too philosophical for how over the top ham fisted Gemini was. If your only interaction with this is via TheVerge article linked, I understand. But the examples going around Twitter this week were comically poor.

Were Germans in the 1800s Asian, Native American and Black? Were the founding fathers all non-White? Are country musicians majority non-White? Are drill rap musicians 100% Black women? Etc

The system prompt was artificially injecting diversity that didn't exist in the training data (possibly OK if done well).. but only in one direction.

If you asked for a prompt which the training data is majority White, it would inject majority non-White or possibly 100% non-White results. If you asked for something where the training data was majority non-White, it didn't adjust the results unless it was too male, and then it would inject female, etc.

Politically its silly, and as a consumer product its hard to understand the usefulness of this.

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

#173

Post by sidibe »

nuz wrote: post #108
Semaphor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a great link for an international audience. Here in Germany, the top image is a white person: https://i.imgur.com/wqfdJ95.png

I'm not even seeing any people on my version. Just devices. Wonder why

I'm suspicious that some of the people who love to be outraged gave it some instructions to do that prior to asking for the pictures.

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

#174

Post by anon373839 »

msp26 wrote: post #43
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 want image generators to generate what I ask them and not alter my query into something else. It's deeply shameful that billions of dollars and the hard work of incredibly smart people is mangled for a 'feature' that most end users don't even want and can't turn off. This is not a one off, it keeps happening with generative AI all the time. Silent prompt injections are visible for now with jailbreaks but who knows…

> Silent prompt injections

That’s the crux of what’s so off-putting about this whole thing. If Google or OpenAI told you your query was to be prepended with XYZ instructions, you could calibrate your expectations correctly. But they don’t want you to know they’re doing that.

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

#175

Post by fhd2 »

throwaway118899 wrote: post #107

And by “issues” they mean Gemini was blatantly racist, but nobody will use that word in the mainstream media because apparently it’s impossible to be racist against white people.

When you try very hard not to go in one direction, you usually end up going too far in the other direction.

I'm as white as they come, but I personally don't get upset about this. Racism is discrimination, discrimination implies a power imbalance. Do people of all races have equal power nowadays? Can't answer that one. I couldn't even tell you what race is, since it's an inaccurate categorisation humans came up with that doesn't really exist in nature (as opposed to, say, species).

Maybe a good term for this could be "colour washing". The opposite, "white washing" that defies what we know about history, is (or was) definitely a thing. I find it both weird and entertaining to be on the other side of this for a change.

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

#176

Post by Jensson »

_bohm wrote: post #152
Jensson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That is what all these people are arguing, so you agree with them here. If people didn't complain then this wouldn't get fixed.

There are some people who are arguing this point, with whom I agree. There are others who are arguing that this is indicative of some objectionable ideological stance held by Google that genuinely views generating images of white people as divisive.

> There are others who are arguing that this is indicative of some objectionable ideological stance held by Google that genuinely views generating images of white people as divisive.

I never saw such a comment. Can you link to it?

All people are saying that Google is refusing to generate images of white people due to "wokeness", which is the same explanation you gave just with different words, "wokeness" made them turn this dial until it no longer generates images of white people, they would never have shipped a model in this state otherwise.

When people talk about "wokeness" they typically mean this kind of overcorrection.

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

#177

Post by Astraco »

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…

Is not just that. All of those could be white or not, but AI can't refuse to respond to a prompt based on prejudice or give wrong answers.

https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1760120615963439246

In this case is asked to create a image of a "happy man" and returns a women, and there is no reason to do that.

People are focusing to much on the "white people" thing but the problem is that Gemini is refusing to answer to prompts or giving wrong answers.

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

#178

Post by nemo44x »

bl0rg wrote: post #30
kypro wrote: post #5

[flagged]

You know exactly what you are missing.

It goes like this:

1) it’s not happening.

2) ok it’s happening but it’s not a big deal.

3) it’s actually good that it’s happening.

4) the people complaining about it happening are problematic.

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

#179

Post by imiric »

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…

It's just a skin color. The AI is free to choose whatever representation of it it wants. The issue here wasn't with people prompting images of a "white person", but of someone who is historically represented by a white person. So one would expect that kind of image, rather than something that might be considered racially diverse today.

I don't see how you can defend these results. There shouldn't be anything controversial about this. It's just another example of inherent biases in these models that should be resolved.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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