Google Blocked Gemini From Generating Images of Humans, But It ...
After an embarrassing rollout and a bunch of attention from all the wrong people, Google forbade its Gemini AI from generating images of people — but, for whatever reason, it'll still draw clowns. Which are people. Right? Right!?
The Genesis of the Issue
This debacle began last week when anti-woke crusaders online got big mad about Gemini, which was formerly known as Bard until this rebrand, generating "racially diverse" images for prompts such as "American," "Viking," and "Founding Fathers," that they expected to be entirely white. Adding to the fracas, it even depicted Nazis as people of color.
Google's Response
In response, Google apologized for vague and unspecified "inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions." Initially, the tech giant took the entire image-generating capability offline. Now the image generation feature, which lives inside the chatbot itself, is back up, but it's forbidden from depicting people. When you ask it to do so, it responds with a boilerplate statement that reads very similarly to a company blog post admitting that the AI "got it wrong" and that it would be pausing the image generation of people as it works on improvements.
"We are working to improve Gemini’s ability to generate images of people," Gemini's response reads. "We expect this feature to return soon and will notify you in release updates when it does."
Unexpected Clown Illustrations
While tinkering around with Gemini, Futurism found that the image generator is still happy to generate images of clowns inside specific environments. If you ask for just a clown it still demurs, but if you ask it for images of clowns in settings such as submarines or spaceships, it happily spits out goofy illustrations — or, in some cases, some unsettling and realistic-looking clowns.
Challenges Faced
As the interaction with Gemini continued, it became clear that the chatbot was wising up to the tricks. By the end of it, it was refusing to generate some of the images prompted, such as "clown inside a submarine" and "little guy in a spaceship." However, others, like the actually terrifying clown inside an amoeba below, still came up. Eventually, it totally refused to do any more images at all.
The Verdict
The whole incident once again highlights how easy it is to circumvent AI guardrails — and how challenging it is for the creators of AI, even a well-resourced one like Google, to anticipate the infinite number of potentially problematic requests users could make.
Final Thoughts
Google's statement mentioned that Gemini is a creativity and productivity tool that may not always be accurate or reliable. They reassured users that they are working to address instances where the product falls short in its responses.
For more on Gemini, check out Google Chatbot Refused to Say Whether Elon Musk Is Better Than Adolf Hitler.
