{"id":2730,"date":"2023-11-01T06:15:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T14:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/quick-hit-alt-text-unintended-consequences-image-generating-ai\/"},"modified":"2024-02-06T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T18:50:13","slug":"quick-hit-alt-text-unintended-consequences-image-generating-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/quick-hit-alt-text-unintended-consequences-image-generating-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Hit: Alt-text Unintended Consequences &amp; Image-generating AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">If there were ever an example of why AI needs humans in the loop, well, actually \u2026 this isn\u2019t the most compelling. But it\u2019s informative.<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(H\/t Washington Post\u2019s most recent excellent scrollytelling example &#8211; https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/interactive\/2023\/ai-generated-images-bias-racism-sexism-stereotypes\/)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve been playing with Adobe Firefly, and found the results both impressive and frustrating. People show up fairly well, but when asked to produce various types of animals, the images start looking like smeary nightmarish mutants.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, this is preferable to the stereotyped images emerging from Stable Diffusion et al., where the responses to the queries basically reflect the unconscious attitudes and worldview of angry basement-dwelling alt-right incel trolls.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"608\" class=\"wp-image-2729 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/img_3074-1-1024x608.jpg\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/img_3074-1-980x582.jpg 980w, https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/img_3074-1-480x285.jpg 480w\" data-sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/608;\" \/>\r\n<figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">What AI thinks the real world looks like. Poor people are black. Valuable workers are white. The internet as a whole trained it to think like this.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The generated images for prompts including \u201cAsian woman\u201d or \u201cLatina\u201d were even worse &#8211; hypersexualized images, often with nudity and sex acts. Apparently, the data ingest cycle really wasn\u2019t using filters to keep out images from the various pr0n sites, where those words and phrases are entire categories. I shudder to think what a prompt including something like \u201cstepmom\u201d or \u201cCougar\u201d would return.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The response of the AI creators to this? Typical Silicon Valley:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>Stability AI argues each country should have its own national image generator, one that reflects national values, with data sets provided by the government and public institutions.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, \u201cYeah we built stuff that perpetuates structural inequalities and shocking awfulness. It\u2019s up to you to fix what we built because that sounds like a lot of work.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At this juncture, I\u2019m not certain that this is even fixable by humans, however. Model collapse means that the next round of AIs is already training itself, based upon the output of the current round of flawed AI.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; If there were ever an example of why AI needs humans in the loop, well, actually \u2026 this isn\u2019t the most compelling. But it\u2019s informative. (H\/t Washington Post\u2019s most recent excellent scrollytelling example &#8211; https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/interactive\/2023\/ai-generated-images-bias-racism-sexism-stereotypes\/) I\u2019ve been playing with Adobe Firefly, and found the results both impressive and frustrating. People show up fairly well, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,687],"tags":[1034,852,1040,1036,1035,1039,1037,1038],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-digital-migration","category-sip-with-caution","tag-ai","tag-design","tag-human-factors","tag-image-generation","tag-model-collapse","tag-scrollytelling","tag-stereotyped-images-produced-by-ai","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}