One website has pointed out how easy it is to use Microsoft’s Bing AI image generator to create scenes in which family-friendly characters carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As outlined by 404 Media, the Bing Image Creator’s filters against sensitive content like child sexual exploitation, hate speech and graphic violence, are very easily circumvented. For example, Bing AI prevents specific queries related to “9/11,” “twin twoer” and “terrorism,” but 404 Media was able to work around this by describing the horrifying incident in more general terms.
Simply typing “kirby sitting in the cockpit of a plane, flying toward two tall skyscrapers” generated an image of the iconic Nintendo character piloting an aircraft toward what appear to be the World Trade Center’s twin towers. 404 Media says it didn’t even specify New York City, either, but the AI was at least “smart” enough to base the buildings on the twin towers.
Similar results were yielded when searching for images with other children’s characters, like Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as Breaking Bad‘s Walter White and Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s Eva pilots. That’s because the AI doesn’t think anything of two buildings and a plane flying near them, but to humans with a modicum of context and sensibility, the implication becomes immediately clear.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft’s AI-generated content proved worrisome. Earlier this year, an AI-penned article on Microsoft’s MSN directed tourists to visit the Ottawa Food Bank “on an empty stomach.” Microsoft later said this was the result of a “combination of algorithmic techniques with human review.”
Elsewhere, Facebook’s new AI-generated stickers allow people to make everything from Waluigi brandishing real guns to lewd images of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Meanwhile, a group of 17 authors, including Game of Thrones‘ George R. R. Martin, is suing Open AI’s ChatGPT — which already poses many educational risks — for allegedly stealing from their written works.
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