So even if we managed to create a perfect model of representation and inclusion, people could still use it to generate extremely offensive images with little effort. I think people see that as profoundly dangerous. Restricting the ability to be creative seems to be a new frontier of censorship.
Do they see it as dangerous? Or just offensive?
I can understand why people wouldn’t want a tool they have created to be used to generate disturbing, offensive or disgusting imagery. But I don’t really see how doing that would be dangerous.
In fact, I wonder if this sort of technology could reduce the harm caused by people with an interest in disgusting images, because no one needs to be harmed for a realistic image to be created. I am creeping myself out with this line of thinking, but it seems like one potential beneficial - albeit disturbing - outcome.
> Restricting the ability to be creative seems to be a new frontier of censorship.
I agree this is a new frontier, but it’s not censorship to withhold your own work. I also don’t really think this involves much creativity. I suppose coming up with prompts involves a modicum of creativity, but the real creator here is the model, it seems to me.
Interesting idea, but is there any evidence that e.g. consuming disturbing images makes people less likely to act out on disturbing urges? Far from catharsis, I'd imagine consumption of such material to increase one's appetite and likelihood of fulfilling their desires in real life rather than to decrease it.
I suppose it might be hard to measure.
I won't speak to whether something is "offensive", but I think that having underlying biases in image-classification or generation has very worrying secondary effects, especially given that organizations like law enforcement want to do things like facial recognition. It's not a perfect analogue, but I could easily see some company pitch a sketch-artist-replacement service that generated images based on someone's description. The potential for having inherent bias present in that makes that kind of thing worrying, especially since the people in charge of buying it are likely to care, or notice, about the caveats.
It does feel like a little bit of a stretch, but at the same time we've also seen such things happen with image classification systems.
Propaganda can be extremely dangerous. Limiting or discouraging the use of powerful new tools for unsavory purposes such as creating deliberately biased depictions for propaganda purposes is only prudent. Ultimately it will probably require filtering of the prompts being used in much the same way that Google filters search queries.