AI Explaining Itself -- Sort Of

I’ve been using AI for a couple of months to generate images for my posts, podcasts, journal covers and coloring pages. It’s been interesting getting the hang of how to create the text prompts in order to get what I’m seeking.

There has even been times it appears that I’ve either stumped the AI Generator or it shows bias in how it produces images. I thought I’d sit one down and ask it a few questions about some of the situations I’ve had.

Woman Knitting while Sitting in a Kayak

This was the first time I got some really odd responses from the image generator. I started out I wanted a grandma sitting in a chair knitting. I kept getting variations of this:

Then I tried to get the figure into a Kayak since the person I had in mind likes Kayaking. I got this:

Eventually I used this image.

I took the question to GPT Chat AI:

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SHADOWS: when I prompted an AI Image generator for an image of a woman knitting in a kayak it generated an image of a woman knitting in a a kayak that was knitted ... doesn't AI understand what knitting is?

GPT CHAT:
As a large language model, I don't have access to the functionality of an image generator, so I'm unable to comment on the specific image you describe. However, it's important to keep in mind that image generation models are limited by the data they are trained on and the algorithms used to generate the images.

sounds like the language model has been trained by a PR firm

They may not always generate images that align with our expectations or that accurately reflect the real world. In the case of the image you describe, it's possible that the model simply didn't have enough information about what a kayak looks like and generated an image that doesn't accurately reflect the real world.

how silly of me… kayaks have only been around for thousands of years. I should have known the AI would not know what it was

It's also possible that the model was trying to be creative or humorous in its output.

can’t produce an accurate kayak but does humour hmmm
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So I guess that’s the end result. Humour beats real world content. Let’s see what it does with gender bias.

The Young Girl Finding An Unconscious Male

After trying to get the AI to generate a bearded male unconscious on a path and a young woman finding him without success, I then asked the GPT Chat to generate a prompt for me which I use with the same type of response:

The AI seemed to be determined that it was going to be a guy finding a girl. After trying some variations on the GPT prompt without getting any closer I finally removed the girl from the image and ended up with this:

Let’s see what my AI friend has to say:

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SHADOWS: when I prompted an AI Image generator for an image of a young girl finding an unconscious bearded man on a path on a snowy night, it kept returning a guy finding a young girl. I even asked you to write the prompt and got similar results with the bias toward male rescuing female. Is AI gender biased?

GPT CHAT:
AI models can reflect the biases present in the data that they are trained on, as they learn to recognize patterns in the data and make predictions based on those patterns.

If the data used to train an image generation model includes a disproportionate number of images showing men rescuing women, the model may be more likely to generate images of men rescuing women when it is prompted to do so.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the model is biased in the sense that it has a preference or prejudice, but rather that it has learned to associate certain patterns with certain outcomes based on the data it has seen.

It's important to carefully consider the potential biases that may be present in the data used to train AI models and to try to mitigate those biases to the extent possible.

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So there we have it. AI is going to have some built in gender bias due to the material it was trained on. I would hope that future generations of AI will actually follow the direction given in prompts which would overcome that bias.

On to the next one where race stereotypes crops up. Likely going to get a similar response, but let’s see.

A Male & Female Pimp

My next encounter was when I decided to refresh the pimp images I’ve been using for PYPT. I asked the AI generator to give me a male and female pimps flamboyantly dressed. I got the flamboyantly dressed but all black.

I tried several tweaks and finally came the closest I could get by adding that one should be caucasion. The results was only marginally better.

Let’s see what AI has to say:

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SHADOWS:
I prompted an AI Image generator for images of a male and female pimp flamboyantly dressed. It returned all black models of pimps. Even when I specified one black and one Caucasian the result was more one black and one mixed race. Racial stereotyping?

GPT Chat:
It's possible that the image generator you used was trained on data that includes a disproportionate number of images of black people dressed as pimps, and therefore the model learned to associate certain patterns with certain outcomes based on the data it has seen.

As a result, when the model was prompted to generate images of people dressed as pimps, it may have been more likely to generate images of black people because that is what it has learned to expect based on the data it has seen.

It's important to carefully consider the potential biases that may be present in the data used to train AI models and to try to mitigate those biases to the extent possible.

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I certainly hope that developers are paying attention to what it’s AI is telling it or we’re going to continue to be plagued with historical stereotypes and biases even as society moves away from them.

Shadowspub writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.

NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s

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