3 ms·

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

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.

ActionHank 3y ago
I love the idea of testing an image gen to see if it generates multicultural ww2 nazis because it is just so contradictory.
- aniftythrifrty 3y ago
  Of course it's not that different from today.
  - Perceval 3y ago
    The media have done a number of stories, analyses, and editorials noting that white nationalist/white supremacy groups appear to be more diverse than one would otherwise expect: * https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/why-white-supremacist-groups-attract-latinos-their-ranks https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/why-... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/minorities-far-right-visible-role/2021/05/16/e7ba8338-a915-11eb-8c1a-56f0cb4ff3b5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/minorities-... * https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/2/why-white-supremacists-are-not-always-white https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/2/why-white-suprem... * https://www.voanews.com/a/why-some-nonwhite-americans-espouse-right-wing-extremism-/7101229.html https://www.voanews.com/a/why-some-nonwhite-americans-espous... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/08/texas-shooting-white-supremacy-non-whites/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/08/texas-sho... * https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-c...
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  This "What if Civilization had lyrics ?" skit comes to mind : https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU
vidarh 3y ago
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 borderline examples where creating the notion that there was more equality than there really was, for example, downplays systematic historical inequities. I think you'll struggle to find people who want this kind of "diversity*. I certainly don't. Getting something representative matters, but it also needs to reflect reality.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  I think you hit on an another important issue: Do people want the generated images to be representative, or aspirational?
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I think there's a large overlap there, in that in media, to ensure an experience of representation you often need to exaggerate minority presence (and not just in terms of ethnicity or gender) to create a reasonable impression, because if you "round down" you'll often end up with a homogeneous mass that creates impressions of bias in the other direction. In that sense, it will often end up aspirational. E.g. let's say you're making something about a population with 5% black people, and you're presenting a group of 8. You could justify making that group entirely white very easily - you've just rounded down, and plenty of groups of 8 within a population like that will be all white (and some will be all black). But you're presenting a narrow slice of an experience of that society, and not including a single black person without reason makes it easy to create an impression of that population as entirely white. But it also needs to at scale be representative within plausible limits, or it just gets insultingly dumb or even outright racist, just against a different set of people.
  - Scea91 3y ago
    I think you can be aspirational for the future but I can't see how a request for an image in historical context can ever be desired to be aspirational instead of realistic? On a second thought, maybe for requests like "picture of a crowd cheering signing of the declaration of independence" the exists a big public demand for images that are more diverse than reality was? However, there are many reasons to prefer historical accuracy even here.
scarface_74 3y ago
ChatGPT won’t draw a picture of a “WW2 German soldier riding a horse”. Makes sense. But it won’t even draw “a picture of a modern German soldier riding a horse”. Are Germans going to be tarnished forever? FWIW: I’m a black guy not an undercover Nazi sympathizer. But I do want my computer to do what I tell it to do.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Tried and it refused on the basis of having military themes, and explained it was due to content restrictions. Restricting images of war seems kind of silly given the prevalence of hyper-realistic video games that simulate war in gory detail, but it's not related to the reasons for Gemini going wrong.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    However, ChatGPT 4 would draw a picture of an American soldier during WW2 riding a horse.
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      You're right. That refusal is disappointing.

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.

ActionHank 3y ago

I love the idea of testing an image gen to see if it generates multicultural ww2 nazis because it is just so contradictory.

aniftythrifrty 3y ago
Of course it's not that different from today.
- Perceval 3y ago
  The media have done a number of stories, analyses, and editorials noting that white nationalist/white supremacy groups appear to be more diverse than one would otherwise expect: * https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/why-white-supremacist-groups-attract-latinos-their-ranks https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/why-... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/minorities-far-right-visible-role/2021/05/16/e7ba8338-a915-11eb-8c1a-56f0cb4ff3b5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/minorities-... * https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/2/why-white-supremacists-are-not-always-white https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/2/why-white-suprem... * https://www.voanews.com/a/why-some-nonwhite-americans-espouse-right-wing-extremism-/7101229.html https://www.voanews.com/a/why-some-nonwhite-americans-espous... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/08/texas-shooting-white-supremacy-non-whites/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/08/texas-sho... * https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-c...
BlueTemplar 3y ago
This "What if Civilization had lyrics ?" skit comes to mind : https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU

vidarh 3y ago

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 borderline examples where creating the notion that there was more equality than there really was, for example, downplays systematic historical inequities. I think you'll struggle to find people who want this kind of "diversity*. I certainly don't. Getting something representative matters, but it also needs to reflect reality.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
I think you hit on an another important issue: Do people want the generated images to be representative, or aspirational?
- vidarh 3y ago
  I think there's a large overlap there, in that in media, to ensure an experience of representation you often need to exaggerate minority presence (and not just in terms of ethnicity or gender) to create a reasonable impression, because if you "round down" you'll often end up with a homogeneous mass that creates impressions of bias in the other direction. In that sense, it will often end up aspirational. E.g. let's say you're making something about a population with 5% black people, and you're presenting a group of 8. You could justify making that group entirely white very easily - you've just rounded down, and plenty of groups of 8 within a population like that will be all white (and some will be all black). But you're presenting a narrow slice of an experience of that society, and not including a single black person without reason makes it easy to create an impression of that population as entirely white. But it also needs to at scale be representative within plausible limits, or it just gets insultingly dumb or even outright racist, just against a different set of people.
- Scea91 3y ago
  I think you can be aspirational for the future but I can't see how a request for an image in historical context can ever be desired to be aspirational instead of realistic? On a second thought, maybe for requests like "picture of a crowd cheering signing of the declaration of independence" the exists a big public demand for images that are more diverse than reality was? However, there are many reasons to prefer historical accuracy even here.

scarface_74 3y ago

ChatGPT won’t draw a picture of a “WW2 German soldier riding a horse”. Makes sense. But it won’t even draw “a picture of a modern German soldier riding a horse”. Are Germans going to be tarnished forever? FWIW: I’m a black guy not an undercover Nazi sympathizer. But I do want my computer to do what I tell it to do.

mike_hearn 3y ago
Tried and it refused on the basis of having military themes, and explained it was due to content restrictions. Restricting images of war seems kind of silly given the prevalence of hyper-realistic video games that simulate war in gory detail, but it's not related to the reasons for Gemini going wrong.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  However, ChatGPT 4 would draw a picture of an American soldier during WW2 riding a horse.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    You're right. That refusal is disappointing.