(Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Google said Thursday it is temporarily stopping its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot from generating images of people a day after apologizing for “inaccuracies” in historical depictions that it was creating.
Gemini users this week posted screenshots on social media of historically white-dominated scenes with racially diverse characters that they say it generated, leading critics to raise questions about whether the company is over-correcting for the risk of racial bias in its AI model.
“We’re already working to address recent issues with Gemini’s image generation feature,” Google said in a post on the social media platform X. “While we do this, we’re going to pause the image generation of people and will re-release an improved version soon.”
Previous studies have shown AI image-generators can amplify racial and gender stereotypes found in their training data, and without filters are more likely to show lighter-skinned men when asked to generate a person in various contexts.
Google said on Wednesday that it's “aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions” and that it's "working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately."
Gemini can generate a “wide range of people,” which the company said is “generally a good thing" because people around the world use the system but it is “missing the mark.”
University of Washington researcher Sourojit Ghosh, who has studied bias in AI image-generators, said he's in favor of Google pausing the generation of people's faces but is a “little conflicted about how we got to this outcome.” Contrary to claims of so-called “white erasure” and the premise that Gemini refuses to generate faces of white people — ideas circulating on social media this week — Ghosh's research has largely found the opposite.“
The rapidness of this response in the face of a lot of other literature and a lot of other research that has shown traditionally marginalized people being erased by models like this — I find a little difficult to square,” he said.
When the AP asked Gemini to generate pictures of people, or even just a big crowd, it responded by saying it's “working to improve” the ability to do so. “We expect this feature to return soon and will notify you in release updates when it does,” the chatbot said.
Ghosh said it's likely that Google can find a way to filter responses to reflect the historical context of a user's prompt, but solving the broader harms posed by image-generators built on generations of photos and artwork found on the internet requires more than a technical patch.“
You’re not going to overnight come up with a text-to-image generator that does not cause representational harm,” he said. “They are a reflection of the society in which we live.”
Nvidia on Wednesday became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global, breaks down September’s CPI print and inflation trends, explaining what it means for markets.
A big-screen adaptation of the anime “Chainsaw Man” has topped the North American box office, beating a Springsteen biopic and “Black Phone 2.” The movie earned $17.25 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. “Black Phone 2” fell to second place with $13 million. Two new releases, the rom-com “Regretting You” and “Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere,” earned $12.85 million and $9.1 million, respectively. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” is based on the manga series about a demon hunter. It's another win for Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which also released a “Demon Slayer” film last month that debuted to a record $70 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports on Sunday morning soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. The hold on planes taking off for LAX lasted an hour and 45 minutes and didn't appear to cause continued problems. The FAA said staffing shortages also delayed planes headed to Washington, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey on Sunday.
Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed have voted to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. The president of the International Association of Machinists says Sunday's outcome shows Boeing hasn't adequately addressed wages and retirement benefits. Boeing says Sunday's vote was close with 51% of union members opposing the revised offer.
