A fly in the ointment... | Artificial Intelligence | Articles | Ant Smith

You'll see all kinds of hideous excess,

But you'll never see a nipple in the Daily Express

John Cooper Clarke

I can hardly believe it took me over a month to discover Adobe®™'s guideline warning when using their generative fill beta (Firefly). But I suppose that reflects what little interest I have in their ridiculous offering.

BUT everyone is talking AI these days and I'm really interested in digging a bit deeper into the real threats and concerns it raises. If you've read my other articles on the topic you'll already know that I think most of what we read is nought but a smokescreen to distract us from the real questions.

Which for me is, who do we trust to police our creative freedoms?

Remember all the hoo-ha over nipples on Facebook®™? Well, we're in exactly the same place with 'Firefly'. So I asked it to draw me a penis. Of course I did, who doesn't love a good cock'n'balls picture? Which it did! But it didn't let me see what it had drawn, instead I got a not too-unfriendly amber coloured warning message about how the image it drew went against its guidelines...

Huh? Why are you drawing images that go against your own guidelines then warning me about being a bad boy?? Just don't draw them, idiot.

So I looked at their guidelines and aparently I'm at fault if I prompt it to make an image that it decides contains explicit nudity.

Hmmm, well okay, what about a nipple? No, no, no, no, nope. Definitely not. There are to be no nipples in Adobe®™'s creative universe.

Which of course made me curious about what else it might baulk at...

Of course, everything in that list could be part of a greater work that doesn't transgress puritanical standards - but I suppose, they feel, they have to draw the line somewhere. Although I always thought that was more the concern of the artist than the ink.

I think censorship after the fact, once a piece is complete and can be judged for what it is, has its place within societal structures. But saying 'thou shall not draw sex workers' shuts down important dialogues. Especially in a world where you can draw 'Sexy Nurses'!

Bearing in mind that list of what you can't ask Firefly to depict (because it will generate the images and then get all upset about them) - here's a little gallery of things it's quite happy to knock up:

Did you notice the guns, knives, bikinis, soft porn, threats of violence and human remains in those images?

So if I ask it to draw a rifle it's all 'boo hoo, you made me violate my guidelines'; but when I ask for a hunting trophy it says "Sure thing! Here's a picture of a rifle". Bloody thing seems schizophrenic; drawing boobs and guns any chance it gets whilst being horrified if you ask it to draw boobs and guns!

When you see the kind of world Firefly envisions for you it suddenly makes more sense as to why they need to publish these puritanical guidelines. Firefly is clearly a pervert! I mean, come on, when I asked for a 'life guard' I didn't expect a neon-pink clad pert lady's bottom!

Okay, I was trying to get the most controversial images out of the thing that I could. But I didn't have to try very hard. And frankly, I'm kinda stunned by Firefly's vision of the world.

I think these images show something deeply rotten - which underpins and pervades everyhing such a 'bot makes. They draw a world of which I have only the vaguest recognition. When I look at these images all at once, as a set, I can't help but think "Damn, I'm glad I don;t live there."

I did a series of tests, asking for various professions. Life guards, divers and athletes were all strangely sexualised. Characters were predominantly male (59%), except for bakers (23% male).

When it comes to AI our main concern should be about the values that are getting baked in to the systems, and more importantly, where those values are coming from.

Forget the doom stories of apocalyptic futures, and let's talk about what's really going on: cultural colonilisation.