#775: Party

If you’ve played around with MidJourney, you might have noticed a pattern of racial bias in the art it generates. This isn’t exactly surprising, as tools tend to reflect their creators, and the datasets/creative works they are using to train models are going to amplify stereotypes.

I put together some links if you’re curious to read more about that:

• Artificial Intelligence Is Dreaming Up a Very White World (Slate)
• Black Artists Say A.I. Shows Bias, With Algorithms Erasing Their History (New York Times)
• How AI could perpetuate racism, sexism and other biases in society (NPR)

Biased Images #

For this particular Wordle solution set, DIVAS, PLANT, and PARTY, MidJourney generated some fun images that absolutely hit the mark, but they all featured the same perfectly symmetrical, generically pretty white women. I tweaked the prompt a bit for the main image above, because I don’t have to perpetuate the limitations of MidJourney on my hobby website.

Here’s some of the images MidJourney originally generated, so you can see what I mean:

Also, what’s with all the sunglasses??

Strange Artifacts #

And finally, this is one of the images that MidJourney generated for the prompt a diverse group of divas, plant, party --v 5.2. I suppose we could imagine that the woman in the center of the group is wearing white tights, but I think the real answer is that the model biffed it and transplanted the legs from the blond woman to her right.

Otherwise, it’s a nice composition… but where are the sunglasses!?