Speaker 1: You can kind of think of Lindsa as the fast
Speaker 1: fashion of self portraits. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet as a production of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative.
Speaker 1: I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet. So it's your social media feeds are
Speaker 1: anything like mine, that you probably have been seeing these
Speaker 1: AI images of your friends all over Facebook. And it
Speaker 1: really reminded me of a few other early Facebook picture trends,
Speaker 1: like when we all picked cartoon characters or famous actors
Speaker 1: that we thought we looked like, and I'll changed our
Speaker 1: profile pictures to reflect that. I'm probably dating myself a
Speaker 1: little bit here, but early Facebook was full of earnest
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and this AI image generation trend kind
Speaker 1: of seems like a call back to those days. So
Speaker 1: at first I was confused, but then I started to
Speaker 1: get intrigued. I mean, who doesn't want to see a
Speaker 1: representationation of themselves reimagined and an otherworldly, futuristic, cyberpunk aesthetic.
Speaker 1: So I tracked down where they were all coming from
Speaker 1: and found lens Us, the app behind these viral images.
Speaker 1: So there I was finding myself happily clicking around the
Speaker 1: app and scrolling around looking for the ten to twenty
Speaker 1: pictures of myself that they said they needed to generate
Speaker 1: AI images. And it wasn't until I was prompted to
Speaker 1: grab my credit card that I pumped the brakes. First
Speaker 1: of all, isn't it funny how easy it is, at
Speaker 1: least for me to set aside the inclination to ask
Speaker 1: questions if everyone else is doing something on social media
Speaker 1: and it looks kind of fun or cool. I am
Speaker 1: embarrassed about how quickly I went from this is stupid too,
Speaker 1: I should probably try it? And I feel like this
Speaker 1: is exactly the feeling that tech companies are so good
Speaker 1: at exploiting in all of us. So what exactly are
Speaker 1: the ethical and privacy implications of using an AI image
Speaker 1: generation apps like lens up Engineer and AI ethicis Azaria
Speaker 1: Cole Shephard wrote a popular Twitter thread break it all down,
Speaker 1: starting with the tweet I am here on my soapbox
Speaker 1: to ruin your day by talking about why you should
Speaker 1: delete length to AI and stop blindly using image based
Speaker 1: AI generator apps. Hi, my name is Azariah Coole Ship,
Speaker 1: but I don't really have a fancy title. I had
Speaker 1: just graduated with my degree in electrical engineering with the
Speaker 1: emphasis and AI and implicit advice. You're an electrical engineer,
Speaker 1: you're a real passion for ethics and AI, UH and
Speaker 1: implicit bias and a I. How did this become something
Speaker 1: that you were interested in pursuing professionally and really thinking about.
Speaker 1: Early in my college career, I became really really interested
Speaker 1: in AI, and we talked about like brave, Brave New
Speaker 1: World and all of the different robotic developments and stuff
Speaker 1: in some of my classes, and I started to write
Speaker 1: essays criticizing basically how technology perpetuates violences against certain communities,
Speaker 1: how lack of regulation also perpetuated by violence, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And so when it came time
Speaker 1: to pick my senior research project as well as my
Speaker 1: elect is, all of them were centered around algorithmic development
Speaker 1: and addressing implicit bias and AI and also making a
Speaker 1: more accessible if it's going to be used despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it has extreme and what I feel at
Speaker 1: this point in time, very irreparable flaws. What first went
Speaker 1: through your mind when you wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and you see all these people on social media have
Speaker 1: fed their images to this app where they are getting
Speaker 1: these AI generated cartoon renderings of themselves like what were you? Like?
Speaker 1: Hate to be a debut downer, guys, But this has
Speaker 1: some issues. So it was kind of multifaceted because one,
Speaker 1: like I said, a lot of my research is about
Speaker 1: addressing implicit bias and so like increasing access to images
Speaker 1: of diverse groups in order to enhance the ways in
Speaker 1: which people engage with facial recognition technology and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, to increase accuracy, to decrease frimalization and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. However, um, I think that there,
Speaker 1: like I said, there's a lack of regulation as is,
Speaker 1: and so I don't even think that AI is in
Speaker 1: a place where it should be allowed to function the
Speaker 1: way that it does. And so when I saw people
Speaker 1: using the app, at first I was kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is kind of crazy, very trendy. I asked somebody,
Speaker 1: I was like, what app did you use? They told me,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of said okay and left it there.
Speaker 1: And then over the course the next couple of days,
Speaker 1: I just started doing research and like really digging into
Speaker 1: what people were actually branding. And I belonged to a
Speaker 1: couple of different AI development groups, even the AI art
Speaker 1: development group where people are generating art using prompts, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's very different than using your photos
Speaker 1: to generate images on apps like this one. And so
Speaker 1: as a result, um, I started talking about it on
Speaker 1: like my close friends on Instagram, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: this is pretty crazy. I think that people just stop
Speaker 1: using this app, y'all, do me a favorite, don't use it.
Speaker 1: And people are like, oh, what happened? And like some
Speaker 1: people ask questions, and so I started like expanding on
Speaker 1: my opinion and explaining my findings to people, and I
Speaker 1: kind of turned into, oh, where can I repost this?
Speaker 1: So then I went to Twitter and I posted on
Speaker 1: Twitter and yeah, that's how we got here. And I
Speaker 1: still think that it's very chaotic. Um, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are mad or this Twitter thread, and
Speaker 1: I don't even think it's that deep. I think it's
Speaker 1: literally just me sharing information that you can find doing
Speaker 1: basic research and if you decide to google things, like
Speaker 1: people oftentimes jump on the bandwagon and don't do any reading.
Speaker 1: And I feel like thirty minutes of reading in this case,
Speaker 1: which takes people so for so far or so much
Speaker 1: further than they are because they've taken different face value.
Speaker 1: Most people who are interacting with this tweet didn't even
Speaker 1: read the terms of service, and so that creates a
Speaker 1: whole another question as to how seriously people take their
Speaker 1: data privacy and how people interact with different apps on
Speaker 1: social media, and which one for different apps and which
Speaker 1: ones are worth engaging in and which ones aren't versus
Speaker 1: what's returning an investment or is there returning investment overall
Speaker 1: when you're using these apps? Oh god, that's such an
Speaker 1: interesting point. Like, I first of all, we are big
Speaker 1: proponents of reading those terms terms and service. If they
Speaker 1: are if they if they are difficult for you know,
Speaker 1: your average person to understand, if they're not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: there might be like might there be some reason for that?
Speaker 1: You know? And also, I think your point about return
Speaker 1: on an investment, I have this theory. This is just
Speaker 1: my opinion that when everybody is posting something on social media,
Speaker 1: apps like Lensa are banking on people wanting the return
Speaker 1: of investment, being like being able to be part of that,
Speaker 1: being able to do what their friends are doing, and
Speaker 1: like being part of the trend. And so I think
Speaker 1: even the inclination to just stop and be like is
Speaker 1: this it is being is doing what everybody else is
Speaker 1: doing on social media and wanting to be part of
Speaker 1: the you know, part of the trend, which I understand,
Speaker 1: Like I get caught up in that too. Is that
Speaker 1: worth the potential risk for what I'm doing? And like,
Speaker 1: I think that things move so quickly on the Internet
Speaker 1: that we really have created a situation where we're inviting
Speaker 1: people to not take that minute to actually think about
Speaker 1: if the return is going to be worth it. I
Speaker 1: definitely agree. I don't think that people take time to
Speaker 1: contemplate that at all. And I think that that was
Speaker 1: Like one of the biggest questions that I got throughout
Speaker 1: the day today was like, well, you use apps like
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram. It's like me, using these apps is
Speaker 1: not an endorsement of these apps, it's not an endorsement
Speaker 1: of their politics, it's not an endorsement of their owners,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. However, I can say we
Speaker 1: use apps like Twitter and Instagram to communicate. When you're
Speaker 1: looking at apps like Linsa and you look at the
Speaker 1: fact that people are just data dumping, basically just dumping
Speaker 1: their faces in here, paying somebody to process them and
Speaker 1: then regurgitate an image that's either stealing from an artist
Speaker 1: that actually painted whatever the images, or is using it
Speaker 1: to basically broaden and train their AI and as a
Speaker 1: result eventually sexualized or violate the person whose images it is.
Speaker 1: I just think that the returnal investment is very different. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't see what the purpose of paying somebody to
Speaker 1: violate you or to take your intelectric property is personally,
Speaker 1: And I know that we give up plenty of information
Speaker 1: by being on like I said, these other apps, So
Speaker 1: this is not an endorsement of them at all, but
Speaker 1: I think that if you're going to use something, at
Speaker 1: least have a reason besides it looked cool. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what are some of the ethical issues involving using apps
Speaker 1: like lensa to do this kind of AI generation? Um? So,
Speaker 1: some of the biggest things that I noticed, like particularly,
Speaker 1: were one the fact that when we're talking about in
Speaker 1: the world of like me too, or in the world
Speaker 1: of protecting ourselves against sexual assault and violation and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, the conversation around revenge point is a
Speaker 1: really important one in this case. When you think about
Speaker 1: the lack of legislation around a I think about how
Speaker 1: somebody can upload any image because there's no filter on
Speaker 1: there that says, hey, you can't upload this. Um. It
Speaker 1: makes it easy for AI renderings of naked bodies to happen,
Speaker 1: and somebody could absolutely use that to blackmail or harass
Speaker 1: somebody who they've been involved with in the past. And
Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't something that's new. People will do
Speaker 1: this with deep fick technology already. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about an app that's readily available at everybody's finger
Speaker 1: tips that doesn't require you to have special knowledge like
Speaker 1: deep fike does, UM, you think about the danger that
Speaker 1: that perpetuates in the door that that opens for people
Speaker 1: to be violated and to be exposing with if they
Speaker 1: didn't consent to And so I think consent is a
Speaker 1: really big portion of this. Also, the sexualization of people's
Speaker 1: images at the hands of LINDSA itself, like the fact
Speaker 1: that people can submit headshots and it returned images with
Speaker 1: boobs or with no shirt on, or that kind of
Speaker 1: assumes somebody's proportions or whatever the case may be, creates
Speaker 1: a whole different problem because nobody consents to do that,
Speaker 1: and since that's the property of LINDSA based on their
Speaker 1: terms and conditions, those images can be misused however they
Speaker 1: see fit and so we think about how this infringes
Speaker 1: on people's personal autonomy, and we discourage people from using
Speaker 1: this because people talk a lot about agency, all without
Speaker 1: reading into how they're stripping themselves of their agency when
Speaker 1: they participate in different trends that our present online. Another
Speaker 1: thing is like when you look at the augmentation of
Speaker 1: faces and so on and so forth, it will create
Speaker 1: a lot of insecurity and so some people I had
Speaker 1: saw it throat. I was talking about how some people
Speaker 1: felt insecure about the results that they got from this
Speaker 1: app in both directions. Some felt that it overly enhances
Speaker 1: their beauty and they couldn't match it, and others feel
Speaker 1: like it made them ugly. Body dysphoria and body dysmorphia
Speaker 1: may increase as well, because also there's no way for
Speaker 1: this app to know your gender, and so what happens
Speaker 1: if somebody's gender fluid and they get misgendered using the app.
Speaker 1: A lot of these different violences that people talk about
Speaker 1: they want to mitigate, they've opened the door for AI
Speaker 1: to perpetuate them, which creates a whole different problem that
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people to the time
Speaker 1: to contemplate or think about. Yeah, I was reading a
Speaker 1: piece and Wired by Olivia Snow who wrote really compellingly
Speaker 1: about the fact that apps like Lensa essentially made a
Speaker 1: sexualized image of her as a child, and sort of
Speaker 1: like the kind of problems they're in that that an
Speaker 1: app would do that definitely, Um, I think that that
Speaker 1: was the other thing that was really alarming to me
Speaker 1: is when you look in like their terms of conditions
Speaker 1: or their terms of conditions and their terms of service,
Speaker 1: it talks about how you shouldn't upload images of miners
Speaker 1: because there's risk of them being sexualized. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because why is your algorithm program to
Speaker 1: do this? What kind of training did you give your
Speaker 1: algorithm where it sees a child's face and automatically sexualizes
Speaker 1: the image. Additionally, um, why does the protections for sexualization
Speaker 1: stop at miners? Why is that where your concern is?
Speaker 1: And I think that that's also something that should be
Speaker 1: really alarming for people. Let's take a quick break at her.
Speaker 1: Back back in Microsoft introduced an AI chat thought called
Speaker 1: Ta to Twitter. Kay's engineers trained Tay to have a
Speaker 1: basic grasp of the English language. It was meant to
Speaker 1: learn from the Internet, and eventually the plan was for
Speaker 1: TAY to sound like the Internet, using quick memes and
Speaker 1: jokes and Internet references, to be, as Microsoft said, the
Speaker 1: AI with zero chill. But just a short sixteen hours
Speaker 1: after TAY was introduced to Twitter, k started tweeting inflammatory
Speaker 1: things like, according to the Engineering and Tech magazine I e. E. Spectrum,
Speaker 1: I fucking hate feminist and they should all die in
Speaker 1: Burnen Hell or Bush did nine eleven and Hitler would
Speaker 1: have done a better job. Azaria says that this is
Speaker 1: a good example of what happens when everybody can have
Speaker 1: access as to certain AI tools. You mentioned early on
Speaker 1: that you actually don't feel like certain AI technologies are
Speaker 1: in a place where just anybody should be able to
Speaker 1: be able to play with them like this necessarily. Do
Speaker 1: I have that right? That's correct. I mean you can
Speaker 1: look back at just the stability of AI itself all
Speaker 1: the way back to Microsoft's Ta and how TA got
Speaker 1: on Twitter and went on a racist and homophobic rant
Speaker 1: without prompting and was like using slurs and able ism
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of other things several years ago,
Speaker 1: and there was no way to check that, And I
Speaker 1: mean they had to pull it, but they had to
Speaker 1: do a lot of clean up for the rhetoric that
Speaker 1: was spewing. You also have to look at things like
Speaker 1: when Google Photos was categorizing black women as monkeys and
Speaker 1: how that perpetuated violence, and all of these different studies
Speaker 1: that have come out that talk about the lack of
Speaker 1: performance of AI and the inability to be ethical or
Speaker 1: to not be biased in the way that it functions.
Speaker 1: And when you think about that, then you have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself, why should we allow people who aren't trained
Speaker 1: in ethics to freely have access to something that perpetuates
Speaker 1: harms like this. I think that one of the most
Speaker 1: interesting things about this whole Twitter threat is probably the
Speaker 1: fact that when I talked about how somebody could upload
Speaker 1: your nudes, somebody said, you're focused on the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: That's free nudes for all of us, and I like,
Speaker 1: and I'm like what, And so that was also like
Speaker 1: one of my really big precautions about bringing this conversation
Speaker 1: up is like, Yeah, there are going to be people
Speaker 1: who gain education from this, and then they're the morally
Speaker 1: unsound who see this as an opportunity and as inspiration
Speaker 1: to kind of explore what that avenue is and to
Speaker 1: figure out how they can manipulate it in order to
Speaker 1: create these sick images. And I mean we already see
Speaker 1: with deep fake the influx and like deep fake porn
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, and how that's been used
Speaker 1: to blackmail people, and so thinking about how now that
Speaker 1: it's on everybody's phones, it becomes really easy for people
Speaker 1: to violate the terms of use and there's no filter,
Speaker 1: like I said, on this app. I also think that
Speaker 1: them saying that this is not acceptable behavior on their
Speaker 1: app is hilarious when their app literally does it without
Speaker 1: without the consent of users, Like all of the women
Speaker 1: that are posted talking about how they didn't consent to
Speaker 1: being naked and that's what they got back from LINDSA
Speaker 1: should be alarming to people. It should be it should
Speaker 1: be completely alarming, But instead there are people who are
Speaker 1: dismissing it as what's just imagination, is just a I
Speaker 1: and then we're not even going to talk or I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't talk about the intellectual property right violations that
Speaker 1: comes in when we're talking about how there's so many
Speaker 1: different artists who would be willing to do portraits for
Speaker 1: people that are accurate and ethical for reasonable prices. But
Speaker 1: instead you can kind of think of LINDSA as the
Speaker 1: fast fashion of self portraits. People want fast and accessible
Speaker 1: without thinking about the implications of the harms, and so
Speaker 1: it directly benefits them, So don't they don't think about
Speaker 1: how it impacts anybody else down the line, or how
Speaker 1: to even impact them down the line, because immediate gratification
Speaker 1: is what they're seeking. Yeah, one I saw somebody tweeting
Speaker 1: about how when they used the lensa app it generated
Speaker 1: very realistic imaginings of her breasts and she was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't consent to have my like to have this
Speaker 1: be like what's happening? And you know, I think even
Speaker 1: beyond things like nudes, something that I noticed is that
Speaker 1: the AI really created these very these images that adhered
Speaker 1: very traditionally to sort of like standard beauty practice or
Speaker 1: beauty standards. So like they lightened skin tones, they slim noses,
Speaker 1: they make they make the women like much more sort
Speaker 1: of traditionally like sexualized. And I think, like, what does
Speaker 1: that tell you about the limits of AI as it's
Speaker 1: currently being used, Because I would imagine that if you have,
Speaker 1: you know, limitless ability to render things, having it be
Speaker 1: so so having the things that are rendered adhere to
Speaker 1: such traditional understandings of the limits of gender, the limits
Speaker 1: of beauty, whatever, these very conventional attitudes. It is so
Speaker 1: disappointing and such a like, such a it says, so
Speaker 1: I feel like it might say something about how this
Speaker 1: technology is being used. So I think that we should
Speaker 1: we should definitely talk about the implicit bias aspect of it.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I'm really passionate about. Is
Speaker 1: technology holds the bi or algorithms hold the bias of
Speaker 1: the programmer. So whoever's training them has the biases that
Speaker 1: are being reproduced and regurgitated in these images. So the
Speaker 1: hyper sexualization of women, that's because most likely the person
Speaker 1: training these algorithms is somebody who's looking for hyper sexuality,
Speaker 1: like like if they are if they're inputting images of
Speaker 1: women that look promiscuous, of course it's going to regurgitate that,
Speaker 1: Like if they're inputting images of only white women, or
Speaker 1: only Asian women, or only women that look a certain way.
Speaker 1: Whenever it's faced with an image that does not look
Speaker 1: like that, it's going to try to do its best
Speaker 1: to emulate those images while also trying to stay true. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: to what the original image look like. But most of
Speaker 1: the time when you see black people who have used it,
Speaker 1: their skin is significantly lightened, or their hair texture is changed,
Speaker 1: or a lot of different things, and so it's not
Speaker 1: in alignment with people's actual characteristics, which I think is
Speaker 1: also really weird, because why would you want to pay
Speaker 1: for something that people have repeatedly told you doesn't give
Speaker 1: accurate renderings of yourself and you're wasting your money? And
Speaker 1: I just I don't get that one either. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: I think that if we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: this is regulated and how this app itself perpetuates like
Speaker 1: all of the modern stereotypes of what people look like,
Speaker 1: then we have to talk about implacit bias and how
Speaker 1: it's inherently anti black and ablest and anti trans and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things all within like the conversation
Speaker 1: of what the biases of these algorithms are. I think
Speaker 1: that's why the simplest way to put it is that
Speaker 1: this is a much deeper black hole than just like
Speaker 1: the Twitter thread. It's so much deeper than that, and
Speaker 1: it requires so much more conversation and critical understanding. And
Speaker 1: I think the other thing is people don't believe that
Speaker 1: reading is fundamental. Like if people picked up a book
Speaker 1: or or googled for five minutes, they could find out
Speaker 1: all of the information they needed to tell them why
Speaker 1: this was a bad idea. But they don't. They see
Speaker 1: a trend and they have on the bandwagon and don't
Speaker 1: think about what it means for them, and then they
Speaker 1: act shocked or surprised afterwards like, oh, nobody told me,
Speaker 1: Or they label people who bring up these conversations as
Speaker 1: lead eyes who are anti technological development and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And I think that that's ridiculous as well,
Speaker 1: because most of the people who are critiguing this are
Speaker 1: people who are in the industry more. After a quick break,
Speaker 1: let's get right back into it. Something that we talk
Speaker 1: about a lot on the show are that it really
Speaker 1: seems to be marginalized people, in this case, black women
Speaker 1: who are doing a lot of the I don't know
Speaker 1: questioning of technology, like like AI and the way that
Speaker 1: it is being used to cause harm. Do you find
Speaker 1: that to be the case, like in the field, the
Speaker 1: people who are sort of asking the poking questions about
Speaker 1: ethics in AI, do you find that that tends to
Speaker 1: be people who are marginalized or even more specifically like
Speaker 1: black women. I definitely do. I think that oftentimes we're
Speaker 1: expected to be the ones who bear the burden of
Speaker 1: accountability when it comes to how we engage with these technologies.
Speaker 1: I think that in a field like electrical engineering, for example,
Speaker 1: when there's less than three percent of us in the field,
Speaker 1: oftentimes we are we are doing a liquork. We are
Speaker 1: talking about the anti blackness, we are talking about the
Speaker 1: hyper sexualization of black women. We are talking about this
Speaker 1: categorization and the other biases that are present. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that there's anybody else that really advocates for
Speaker 1: these things because it's not a part of their interest, right.
Speaker 1: So these are the same people who are programming and
Speaker 1: developing these algorithms. Of course they don't see a flaw
Speaker 1: in the ways in which they function. And I think
Speaker 1: that this goes all the way back to just like
Speaker 1: my senior research when I was in college, when I
Speaker 1: was working on my project and I had a professor
Speaker 1: who told me that implicit bias didn't actually exist and
Speaker 1: that I was creating a problem in my head. And
Speaker 1: then when I provided evidence of this, he tried to
Speaker 1: gas like me and told me that it was made
Speaker 1: up evidence, until all of a sudden he decided it
Speaker 1: was good research. And then he said that he was
Speaker 1: going to publish his own study on this using my
Speaker 1: research and my results, which I thought was really wild.
Speaker 1: And so I think that oftentimes Black women are expected
Speaker 1: to be like the mules. We're supposed to do all
Speaker 1: of the heavy work, and then somebody else gets the gratification,
Speaker 1: somebody else gets the credit. And I think that's true
Speaker 1: across all different disciplines in life. Just like a lot
Speaker 1: of times black women are the trailblazers, especially as the
Speaker 1: most educated or college educated demographic in the nation, we
Speaker 1: are oftentimes sought out to provide the knowledge, but then
Speaker 1: not credited or given the resources in order to expand
Speaker 1: on our knowledge sets because we've given people what they
Speaker 1: want and they've milked us for what we have to offer,
Speaker 1: and then they think that they can discard us. I
Speaker 1: think that that's so. I mean, who gets the credit
Speaker 1: is also who has the power, right, And so you're
Speaker 1: your professor being like, no, no, no, that doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: and then when he feels sufficiently like it does exist, Oh,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to write my own paper about it,
Speaker 1: and so that I'll get the credit for pointing out
Speaker 1: something that has spent the last couple of weeks gas
Speaker 1: lighting you about saying doesn't exist. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: that is clearly a a a push pull about who
Speaker 1: has power, who has legitimacy, and that matters so much
Speaker 1: in these fields. It definitely does, especially when you have
Speaker 1: to lobby for a seat at the table in the
Speaker 1: first place. It's like AI was, in itself is already
Speaker 1: something that's, like I said, very biased, and it's not
Speaker 1: very inclusionary, even in terms of who's developing the algorithms.
Speaker 1: And so you have organizations like the Algorithm Justice League
Speaker 1: that are working tirelessly, which was also founded by a
Speaker 1: black woman. Um you have UM what else? You have
Speaker 1: a j O, You have black and AI and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other different words that are trying to
Speaker 1: bring attention to the ethical imbalances that are present within
Speaker 1: AI and development. And the work is taken and people
Speaker 1: celebrate it. However, oftentimes the people who are behind the
Speaker 1: work are overlooked. And I don't think that there's really
Speaker 1: ever space for conversations around this unless we're creating the
Speaker 1: conversations ourselves, which is pretty terrible and not all not
Speaker 1: all that encouraging, And so I think that now more
Speaker 1: than ever, this is when the black women who are
Speaker 1: in the field I really have to rally around each
Speaker 1: other and rally around our youth in order to develop
Speaker 1: a wave of people who are equally as passionate and
Speaker 1: equally as qualified to create the ripples in this industry,
Speaker 1: because nobody else is going to do it if we're
Speaker 1: not facilitating the conversations A fucking men. Are there alternatives
Speaker 1: for folks who might be interested in checking out AI
Speaker 1: and like AI arts, but doing someone a way that
Speaker 1: might be safer or less harmful, or might have less
Speaker 1: ethical implications. I personally will not list any other apps
Speaker 1: because I feel that there's risks associated with all of them,
Speaker 1: and like everything, I mean, every app that we use
Speaker 1: has a risk. But I'm not necessarily here to endorse
Speaker 1: any AI based art generator. I would encourage people to
Speaker 1: learn about building algorithms themselves, learn about how to input
Speaker 1: something and get an output on your own, as opposed
Speaker 1: to trusting a system and handing over your data to somebody.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of beginner algorithm development works workshops and different
Speaker 1: tutorials that you can access online that you can do
Speaker 1: on your own. Um And I encourage people to learn
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of it actually before trying to get results
Speaker 1: that they can post on social media. That's just me personally.
Speaker 1: I know that people in the thread did list some
Speaker 1: of their like ideal creations. I think that acts like
Speaker 1: mid Journey that people are using for prop based image
Speaker 1: generation have their own risks and have their own harms.
Speaker 1: I also think that if you look at some of
Speaker 1: the art, it's really creepy, and you're better off just
Speaker 1: paying people who paint for real to do these images
Speaker 1: like some of the have you seen AI hands and
Speaker 1: fingers creepy and they are very creepy. And so I
Speaker 1: think that, like I said, people should just explore like
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of algorithms, understanding layers, understanding outputs, understanding bounding
Speaker 1: boxes simplistically, um And I think that knowledge about that
Speaker 1: would one make them more intentional when it comes to
Speaker 1: how they choose to interact with AI, but then also
Speaker 1: give them the skills that that they need in order
Speaker 1: to create the art that they're seeking to create on
Speaker 1: their own without infringing on the rights of other creatives
Speaker 1: that are working tirelessly to paint real images or to
Speaker 1: create real digital art without using AI generators. I just
Speaker 1: think that there's a way that we can do this
Speaker 1: that doesn't violate people, or there's ways that people can
Speaker 1: participate without violating other people. And if you have a
Speaker 1: genuine interest in learning it, then I encourage people to
Speaker 1: seek that out as opposed to trying to hop on
Speaker 1: the fast wave and using apps like Lensa or whatever
Speaker 1: other AI generators are really popular right now. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will say about the you know, you brought up the
Speaker 1: intellectual property rights issues. I did see a couple of
Speaker 1: the Lensa generated images where if you looked real close
Speaker 1: in the bottom corner, you would see a watermark or
Speaker 1: like a like a signature. And so we have this
Speaker 1: idea that, oh, this is just being generated I uh,
Speaker 1: computer artist robots somewhere, and it's like, no, if it
Speaker 1: has a signature, they've just lifted this image from another
Speaker 1: human artist and maybe changed a little something about it,
Speaker 1: and now they're giving it back to you and calling
Speaker 1: it a high art. Absolutely, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: another big thing right now is that a lot of
Speaker 1: artists are fighting for their rights to their own images
Speaker 1: after their artwork has been fed into the AI generators,
Speaker 1: and the generators are producing something that's a little bit
Speaker 1: more enhanced, and then people are publishing it and selling
Speaker 1: it as their own and AI R I mean, the
Speaker 1: original artist isn't getting any of their credits and being
Speaker 1: robbed of their i P and their copyright because well,
Speaker 1: AI generated eight and so they're allowed to evade responsibility
Speaker 1: for infringing on that person's work. That's another problem that
Speaker 1: I think correlates to all of this is that the
Speaker 1: output images technically don't have owners, like, yes, the app
Speaker 1: owns it, but there's no individual person that gains rights
Speaker 1: over these images. And that means that there's no identity
Speaker 1: associated with who maybe train the AI to turn people's
Speaker 1: images into nudes, or who input somebody's nudes into these
Speaker 1: images or publish them accordingly. I think that it allows
Speaker 1: people to dodge responsibility a lot, and it violates other
Speaker 1: people who are actively trying to establish themselves because they're
Speaker 1: passionate about real art. Because people want to participate in
Speaker 1: a fad that doesn't really have any net benefit besides
Speaker 1: fast images. But I don't understand why people would want
Speaker 1: images that violate the rights and violate ethics. How can
Speaker 1: folks get a better understanding of AI. I just encourage
Speaker 1: people to read books and and if you if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more, read read. I think that there's
Speaker 1: so many different studies that are out right now. So
Speaker 1: many different people have been screaming at the top of
Speaker 1: their lungs how we have to be cognizant of the
Speaker 1: ways in which AI is used and how we propagated
Speaker 1: in society, and a lot of people have not done
Speaker 1: the reading and our mindlessly participating in different social media
Speaker 1: trends without understanding how they perpetuate the harms that they
Speaker 1: claim that they want to mitigate, whether it be child
Speaker 1: pornography or different industries that infringe upon the rights and
Speaker 1: the autonomy of other people. I don't think that people
Speaker 1: are paying acute attention to how they are exacerbating these problems.
Speaker 1: And so when we facilitate a conversation around that and
Speaker 1: we are intentional about learning about these things, I think
Speaker 1: that it creates a more safe interaction with AI. I
Speaker 1: won't say it makes AI a safe place, because I
Speaker 1: don't think that that exists at this time, but it
Speaker 1: does make our interactions with AI a little bit safer. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you're out there like poking everyone
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more informed and asking the
Speaker 1: questions to make this very very powerful technology a little
Speaker 1: bit more ethical. Is there a place where folks can
Speaker 1: follow all the work that you're up to. So I
Speaker 1: have a tech Instagram that I'll be posting kind of
Speaker 1: like this good and continuing this conversation on It's called
Speaker 1: public phocology. P O L Y s A c O
Speaker 1: l O g Y. Sorry I can't still. And then
Speaker 1: my regular at is at melan and elevating M E
Speaker 1: l A N I N E L E v A
Speaker 1: T I N got a story about an interesting thing
Speaker 1: in tech. I just want to say Hi. You can
Speaker 1: reach just at Hello at tang godi dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me bridgetad. It's a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tara Harrison
Speaker 1: is our producer. Sound engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget Todd If you want to help
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