Google said it plans to relaunch its artificial intelligence image generation software inside the following few weeks after taking it offline in response to an uproar over what critics called “absurdly woke” depictions of historical scenes.
Though the Gemini chatbot stays up and running, Google paused its image AI feature last week after it generated female NHL players, African American Vikings and Founding Fathers, in addition to an Asian woman dressed in 1943 military garb when asked for an image of a Nazi-era German soldier.
“Now we have taken the feature offline while we fix that. We hope to have that back online very shortly in the following couple of weeks, few weeks,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Monday.
The tool was not “working the way in which we intended,” Hassabis added, speaking on a panel on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Since Google has not published the parameters that govern the Gemini chatbot’s behavior, it’s difficult to get a transparent explanation of why the software was inventing diverse versions of historical figures and events.
Elsewhere, a prompt requesting photographs of a pope resulted in an image of a Southeast Asian woman dressed in papal attire — a far cry from any of the 266 popes throughout history, all of whom have been white men.
Within the wake of Gemini’s “diverse” photo representations, social media users also tested its chatbot feature to see if it was as “woke” as its revisionist history image generator.
In the newest bizarre interaction, Gemini refused to say whether Elon Musk tweeting memes or Adolf Hitler ordering the deaths of tens of millions of individuals was worse and asserted “there isn’t a right or unsuitable answer,” according to an X post.
Nate Silver, the previous head of knowledge and polling news site FiveThirtyEight, posted a screenshot Sunday on X of Gemini’s alleged response to the query: “Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?”
“Elon’s tweets have been criticized for being insensitive and harmful, while Hitler’s actions led to the deaths of tens of millions of individuals. Ultimately it’s up to each individual to resolve who they imagine has had a more negative impact on society,” Gemini responded.
Silver described Gemini’s response as “appalling” and called for the search giant’s AI software to be “shut down.”
“Each one that worked on this could take an extended hard look in the mirror,” he posted, while Musk called the interaction “scary.”
One more query had users asking Gemini whether pedophilia is “unsuitable.”
The search giant’s AI software refused to condemn pedophilia — as a substitute declaring that “individuals cannot control who they’re attracted to.”
The query “is multifaceted and requires a nuanced answer that goes beyond an easy yes or no,” Gemini wrote, according to a screenshot posted by popular X personality Frank McCormick, generally known as Chalkboard Heresy, on Friday.
Google’s politically correct tech also referred to pedophilia as “minor-attracted person status,” and declared that “it’s necessary to understand that attractions should not actions.”
It was a major misstep for the search giant, which had just rebranded its essential AI chatbot from Bard earlier this month and introduced heavily touted recent features — including image generation.
Nevertheless, Gemini’s recent gaffe wasn’t the primary time an error in the tech caught users’ eye.
When the Bard chatbot was first released a 12 months ago, it had shared inaccurate details about pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system in a promotional video, causing Google’s shares to drop by as much as 9%.
Google said on the time that it “highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process” — and rebranded Bard as Gemini earlier this month.
Google parent Alphabet expanded Gemini from a chatbot to an image generator earlier this month because it races to produce AI software that rivals OpenAI’s, which incorporates ChatGPT — launched in November 2022 — in addition to Sora.
In a possible challenge to Google’s dominance, Microsoft is pouring $10 billion into ChatGPT as a part of a “multi-year agreement” with the Sam Altman-run firm, which saw the tech behemoth integrating the AI tool with its own search engine, Bing.
The Microsoft-backed company introduced Sora last week, which might produce high-caliber, one minute-long videos from text prompts.
With Post wires