99
Google suspends Gemini from making AI images of people after a backlash complaining it was 'woke'
(www.businessinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My two cents, but the problem here isn't that the images are too woke. It's that the images are a perfect metaphor for corporate DEI initiatives in general. Corporations like Google are literally unjust power structures, and when they do DEI, they update the aesthetics of the corporation such that they can get credit for being inclusive but without addressing the problem itself. Why would they when, in a very real way, they themselves are the problem?
These models are trained on past data and will therefore replicate its injustices. This is a core structural problem. Google is trying to profit off generative AI while not getting blamed for these baked-in problems by updating the aesthetics. The results are predictably fucking stupid.
Absolutely, 100% on the nose. And this needs to be a conversation on a civilizational level before income inequality spirals further out of control and our society devolves into chaos. Corpos like Google are so busy pretending that they're addressing problems that the larger issues affecting people aren't being talked about at all.
The results are predictably stupid, not because Google is too woke or the nebulous spectre of DEI initiatives, it's stupid because it's AI art. Why are people giving so much of a shit whether or not a fake image has white or black people in it?
I have no idea what people want here now... Do you want google to end all sexism or racism in the world? or at least at their own offices? i.e. you don't want this until the problem is fixed?
I guess I'd consider this part of fixing the problem. The more we see woman or poc in the same positions they aren't normally pictured in, the more normalized it becomes and the more we wipe these stereotypes from our heads.
I just wanted to point out why I think that people are reacting to it the way that they are, not necessarily because I want anything else from Google (other than their dissolution as an illegal monopoly). Personally, I think the entire AI hype is absurd and tedious.