Artificial Intelligence is expanding and advancing at such a pace that sometimes we’re just along for the ride.
In other cases, we can shape entirely new imagery, with the help of technology like text-to-image AI. It’s a new technology that companies like Google and Open AI are exploring.
The concept is strikingly simple. You type out a few words of what you want to see, and the AI creates a lifelike image. The results? Accurate, hilarious, weird, and yes, a little scary.
Google’s take is called Imagen, and below are a number of examples of what the computer dreamed up. Again, humans create a simple instruction, like: “A small cactus wearing a straw hat and neon sunglasses in the Sahara desert”, and the computer does the rest.
The novelty of this technology demands to be played with. However, there are a number of reasons why companies like Google aren’t just handing this over to the public.
“Although text-to-image models certainly have fantastic creative potential, they also have a range of troubling applications. Imagine a system that generates pretty much any image you like being used for fake news, hoaxes, or harassment, for example. As Google notes, these systems also encode social biases, and their output is often racist, sexist, or toxic in some other inventive fashion.”
Leave it to us humans to take a technology, and turn it sinister. You can imagine all of the fake news, violent imagery, and exploitative, hurtful stuff that would arise if anyone could create images so easily.
We imagine it will eventually become public use, but perhaps with some safeguards in place.
Read more on The Verge.
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