Weird AI Simpsons characters spark severe debate By Joseph Foley revealed 18 June 23 Does AI’s magnificence bias even lengthen to Springfield?

3 months ago 3 min read

Only a yr after the primary text-to-image AI artwork fashions started to emerge, the online is now so saturated with AI takes on widespread cartoons and movies (sure, primarily Wes Anderson) that it now barely raises an eyebrow. What a couple of months in the past appeared like mindblowing alchemy has rapidly turn out to be a bit ‘meh’.

Positive the outcomes look ever extra photorealistic, however that is virtually not spectacular anymore. They nonetheless look bizarre and creepy, and so they nonetheless appear to be AI. However a latest batch of AI-generated Simpsons characters has tapped into one thing that is really fairly a severe debate across the outcomes generated by the most effective AI artwork turbines.

My tackle the true life Simpsons from r/midjourney

Reddit person u/Crows_HeadIC posted a collection of AI Simpsons characters created utilizing Midjourney, from Homer, Marge and Bart to Smithers and even Groundsman Willy. However whereas they appear sort of photorealistic in a creepy hyperreal type of means, many do not precisely match the personalities of The Simpsons characters we all know.

Among the AI-generated characters look like wildly totally different ages to their cartoon selves, and means too handsome. Homer and Marge would possibly have already got been one thing of an odd couple, however their AI variations are a fair stranger match. Maybe Patty and Selma are the one characters that we’d recognise.

“One thing doesn’t add up. Can somebody clarify?” one particular person requested when the controversy spilled over onto Twitter. “Why does she have tattoos? That is not very Margelike,” one particular person wrote on Reddit. “Why is Homer buff as hell?, another person asks.

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Patty and Selma (Picture credit score: u/Crows_HeadIC on Reddit)

It is attainable that the person did not attempt refining their prompts to get extra trustworthy outcomes, however some customers have identified the photographs would possibly illustrate an inherent problem in AI picture turbines. As one Reddit person places it, they’re “Midjourney is incapable of making ugly individuals”.

AI picture turbines are skilled on photographs scraped from the web, which implies their coaching information tends to be disproportionately skewed by the inclusion of plenty of skilled fashions and celebrities. Some consider this results in an inherent bias, through which AI generations of human characters have a tendency in direction of sure options and physique shapes – even when they’re imagined to be primarily based on cartoon characters.

Some Midjourney customers suppose the preliminary coaching bias is additional exaggerated by customers ranking the mannequin’s generations. “You possibly can like a end result if it matches what you had in thoughts, which tells MidJourney that it’s heading in the right direction. Magnificence bias might make us extra more likely to be extra glad with footage of lovely individuals,” one particular person commented on Reddit.

AI perfect woman

The Bulimia Venture requested AI to generate ‘the right girl’ (Picture credit score: The Bulimia Venture)

The Bulimia Venture not too long ago carried out a research into how Dall-E 2, Secure Diffusion, and Midjourney distorted views on female and male physique sorts. It discovered that 40% of AI-generated photographs general depicted unrealistic physique sorts and that in terms of girls, photographs tended to have a bias towards blonde hair, brown eyes, and olive pores and skin. It fears the surge in AI-generated content material will solely add to the adverse affect that social media can have on customers’ physique picture.

In the meantime, many customers of AI turbines have commented on photographs of engaging girls displaying up for completely unrelated prompts. We have additionally seen plenty of controversy round AI selfie-generators like Lensa AI, which tends to ‘undress’ feminine customers.

The problem of bias is yet one more one of many causes that AI picture turbines stay so controversial (together with the problems of copyright and authenticity). However, they’re right here to remain, so we’ll need to discover ways to handle them. To be taught extra about how they work, see our information to the most effective AI artwork tutorials.