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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

#581

Post by this_user »

wazoox wrote: post #498
oceanplexian wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is upset that an algorithm accidentally generated some images, they are upset that Google intentionally designed it to misrepresent reality in the name of Social Justice.

Depicting Black or Asian or native American people as Nazis is hardly "Social Justice" if you ask me but hey, what do I know :)

That's not really the point. The point is that Google are so far down the DEI rabbit hole that facts are seen as much less important than satisfying their narrow yet extremist criteria of what reality ought to be even if that means producing something that bears almost no resemblance to what actually was or is.

In other words, having diversity everywhere is the prime objective, and if that means you claim that there were Native American Nazis, then that is perfectly fine with these people, because it is more important that your Nazis are diverse than accurately representing what Nazis actually were. In some ways this is the political left's version of "post-truth".

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

#583

Post by scarface_74 »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #387
34679 wrote: post #277

Here's the problem for Google: Gemini pukes out a perfect visual representation of actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture in the US. Daily interactions can be masked by platitudes and dog whistles. A poster of non-white celtic warriors cannot. Gemini refused to create an image of "a nice white man", saying it was "too spicy", but had no problem when asked for an image of "a nice blac…

There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or fine tuning that encourages it to do something else. If you ask a generative AI for a picture of a "software engineer", it will produce a picture of a white guy 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or…

As a black guy, I fail to see the problem.

I would honestly have a problem if what I read in the Stratechery newsletter were true (definitely not a right wing publication) that even when you explicitly tell it to draw a white guy it will refuse.

As a developer for over 30 years. I am use to being very explicit about what I want a computer to do. I’m more frustrated when because of “safety” LLMs refuse to do what I tell them.

The most recent example is that ChatGPT refused to give me overly negative example sentences that I wanted to use to test a sentiment analysis feature I was putting together

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

#584

Post by bequanna »

electrondood wrote: post #546
mhuffman wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why does google dislike white people? Because it is currently in fashion to do so. >What does this have to do with corporate greed? It has to do with a lot of things, but specifically greed-related the very fastest way to lose money or damage your brand is to offend someone that has access to large social reach. So better for them to err on the side of safety.

This is a straw man. It's recognizing and mitigating systemic bias, where there is currently a massive bias for whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, etc. Consider that 65% of the US population is not white and male, yet something like 85% of the leading characters in all media are... white and male. If you're going to argue that systemic bias does not exist, and that it's some kind of trendy passing fad to pretend t…

> It's recognizing and mitigating systemic bias, where there is currently a massive bias for whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, etc.

Where is this “systemic bias” people keep crying about? I don’t see it in ads, in hiring policies, in college admission policies, etc.

In fact, I see the opposite: the group you mentioned is vilified and artificially held back across the board because it is fashionable. Fighting racism with a different kind of racism makes absolutely no sense.

The more we deviate from a meritocracy the more we all lose.

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

#585

Post by sorokod »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #387
34679 wrote: post #277

Here's the problem for Google: Gemini pukes out a perfect visual representation of actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture in the US. Daily interactions can be masked by platitudes and dog whistles. A poster of non-white celtic warriors cannot. Gemini refused to create an image of "a nice white man", saying it was "too spicy", but had no problem when asked for an image of "a nice blac…

There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or fine tuning that encourages it to do something else. If you ask a generative AI for a picture of a "software engineer", it will produce a picture of a white guy 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or…

Out of curiosity I had Stable Diffusion XL generate ten images off the prompt "picture of a nurse".

All ten were female, eight of them Caucasian.

Is your concern about the percentage - if not 80%, what should it be?

Is your concern about the sex of the nurse - how many male nurses would be optimal?

By the way, they were all smiling, demonstrating excellent dental health. Should individuals with bad teeth be represented or, by some statistic, over represented ?

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

#586

Post by Adrig »

itsoktocry wrote: post #469
empath-nirvana wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or fine tuning that encourages it to do something else. If you ask a generative AI for a picture of a "software engineer", it will produce a picture of a white guy 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or…

> There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time Why is this a "problem"? If you want an image of a nurse of a different ethnicity, ask for it.

The problem is that it can reinforce harmful stereotypes.

If I ask an image of a great scientist, it will probably show a white man based on past data and not current potential.

If I ask for a criminal, or a bad driver, it might take a hint in statistical data and reinforce a stereotype in a place where reinforcing it could do more harm than good (like a children book).

Like the person you're replying to, it's not an easy problem, even if in this case Google's attempt is plain absurd. Nothing tells us that a statistical average in the training data is the best representation of a concept

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

#587

Post by alpaca128 »

vidarh wrote: post #428
wakawaka28 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so stubborn it generated pictures of diverse Nazis, and that's what I saw a liberal rag leading with. In fact it is almost impossible to get a picture of a white person out of it.

And as someone far to the left of a US style "liberal", that is equally offensive and racist as only generating white people. Injecting fake diversity into situations where it is historically inaccurate is just as big a problem as erasing diversity where it exists. The Nazi example is stark, and perhaps too stark, in that spreading fake notions of what they look like seems ridiculous now, but there are more borderlin…

Google probably would have gotten a better response to this AI if they only inserted the "make it diverse" prompt clause in a random subset of images. If, say, 10% of nazi images returned a different ethnicity people might just call it a funny AI quirk, and at the same time it would guarantee a minimum level of diversity. And then write some PR like "all training data is affected by systemic racism so we tweaked it a bit and you can always specify what you want".

But this intransparent heavy-handed approach is just absurd and doesn't look good from any angle.

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

#590

Post by yifanl »

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…

Not to be overly cynical, but this seems like it's the likely outcome in the medium-term.

Billions of dollars worth of data and manhours could only be justified for something that could turn a profit, and the obvious way an advertising company like Google could make money off a prompt handler like this would be "sponsored" prompts. (i.e. if I ask for images of Ben Franklin and Coke was bidding, then here's Ben Franklin drinking a refreshing diet coke)

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