Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can produce eerily realistic photos of people who don’t exist enjoying parties that never happened. But if zoom in on these images, “eerie” may be too generous to describe what you see.
Photo Credit: Pexels
Sure, it’s fun to prank your friends with fake celebrity wedding photos or immortalize your dog playing the electric guitar. But recently, a user of Midjourney, an independent research lab that produces an artificial intelligence program based on text prompts, shared pictures of parties that never happened. And it turns out, the technology still has a few creepy kinks to work out.
I had to be specific in order to get male-looking AI people—and even then, variation is a challenge. It definitely defaults to white people when you ask for “people”. pic.twitter.com/x3P0LKL7MU
— Miles (@mileszim) January 13, 2023
Twitter user Miles encountered racial biases, finally entering the phrase “people who aren’t white as mayonnaise” when asking the program to show “people.” AI also generated some significant discrepancies when it comes to real human physical traits. The disturbing representations of teeth and hands go well beyond the uncanny valley.
A casual glance shows photos of fun-loving partygoers until you start counting. Most novice artists struggle with depicting the right proportions of hands and fingers, but the AI versions border on nightmarish.
These hands are fun and in no way do they look completely like vampires. pic.twitter.com/j2tr3xHU9H
— James ミルキー Mielke (@LimitedRunJames) January 15, 2023
“Due to the complex geometry of hands, there is no standard set of lines or shapes that AI can recognize as a hand,” one designer and AI expert explained. AI relies on pattern recognition, rather than approximating various hand width, finger length, and wrist joints.” And if we’re counting, are humans supposed to have that many teeth?
Do….do people have this many teeth? pic.twitter.com/Juref0wA0U
— James ミルキー Mielke (@LimitedRunJames) January 15, 2023
