April 4, 2024

"Despite recent improvements in image quality, AI-generated images frequently presented a simplistic, whitewashed version of queer life."

"I used Midjourney, another AI tool, to create portraits of LGBTQ people, and the results amplified commonly held stereotypes. Lesbian women are shown with nose rings and stern expressions. Gay men are all fashionable dressers with killer abs. Basic images of trans women are hypersexualized, with lingerie outfits and cleavage-focused camera angles."

From "Here's How Generative AI Depicts Queer People/WIRED investigates how artificial intelligence tools, like OpenAI’s Sora, currently portray members of the LGBTQ community. Hint: It’s a lot of purple hair" (Wired).

So... you ask for a stereotype and you get a stereotype.

You could try to be specific, such as asking for a trans person in a particular job, but... "When asked to generate photos of a trans man as an elected representative, Midjourney created images of someone with a masculine jawline who looked like a professional politician, wearing a suit and posing in a wooden office, but who’s [sic] styling more closely aligned with how a feminine trans woman might express herself: a pink suit, pink lipstick, and long, frizzy hair":


That seems pretty good, except for the egregious mistake: The machine, like many human beings, thought "trans man" meant "trans woman." By the way, I'm interested in the phrase "feminine trans woman." The writer wants A.I. to know that a trans woman does not have to lean into femininity. 

64 comments:

Sebastian said...

"The writer wants A.I. to know that a trans woman does not have to lean into femininity."

What does the trans woman have to lean into? Anything? Or is trans whatev? Like, you are sentenced as a man, and then claim to be trans, so you can hang out in the women's prison? Try that, AI.

R C Belaire said...

Life is confusing enough without all this AI crap/concerns to deal with. It will undoubtedly get worse...much worse.

Howard said...

I got to admit that having dyslexia makes this whole issue very confusing

RideSpaceMountain said...

I have no idea what these people are using AI image generators for. Why so serious? I use my premium account to make funny images of the founding fathers engaged in ludicrous scenarios.

Here's on of Washington, Madison, Hancock and others having a cafeteria fight with fried chicken. Everyone who is not using ot to generate hilarity is a loser, as far as I'm concerned.

Aggie said...

I think there's a rather insidious intention with transgenderism, to confuse the issue by playing tricks with language. I think it's intended to keep any straight person from participating in debate, by keeping them off-balance on the subject of the sexual transition - exactly as you have identified. Any reasonably innocent question can be made into shaky ground, ripe for triggering: 'I'm a trans woman ! How dare you !' While the straight person is thinking: WTF, is that male-to-female, or female-to-male? It is purposeful obfuscation.

Enigma said...

Wired inadvertently rediscovers statistics.

The idea of a "norm" or "normal" follows from how common a thing is in the world. There are billions of non-trans males and females, and 99.9% have all the physical traits common to human males or human females. Humans are very, very good at recognizing biological males and females (before makeup, disguises, or surgery).

Transgenderism relies entirely on mimicking and reacting to pre-existing biological averages, or norms, to be understood as the opposite sex or a middle/other category. This is why small harmless butterflies and other weak animals have fake "eye spots" -- they mimic a larger animal and frighten predators. Animals are intelligent enough to be wary.

For AI to be understood as 'intelligent,' it too must rely on averages to recreate and react to norms. In generations past, bohemians, hippies, Christians, Jews, Muslims, bikers, metal heads, punk rockers, stoners, yuppies, playboys, beauty queens, and alternative sexuality aficionados ROUTINELY ADOPTED standard cultural uniforms. So, blame the simplistic practitioners of queer life for generating simplistic queer stereotypes. Purple hair is now a queer cliché, yes.

Queers can be stupid too. Stupidity equity. Idiocracy. DEI.

Amadeus 48 said...

Transwoman are suffering from a delusion and are mentally ill. Is this proper treatment? To humor them and reinforce their delusions?

I guess the standard of care is David Chappelle in the presence of Jim Carrey in character as Andy Kaufman. (See Dave's latest Netflix show.)

samanthasmom said...

When most men dress up as women, they are stereotypes of women. The old show "What Not to Wear" attempted to dress a man as a woman. It was sad.

Christopher B said...

you ask for a stereotype and you get a stereotype.

It can be dressed up in a lot of fancy language but it's hard to avoid thinking that the concept of 'trans' being a gender born in the wrong body must include the assignment of gender to thoughts, feelings, and desires. It's the sexual equivalent of Kendi (Henry Rogers) and D'Angelo's theories on 'anti-racism' requiring a hyper-sensitivity to race in all aspects of life rather than focusing on humanness.

Original Mike said...

"The machine, like many human beings, thought "trans man" meant "trans woman.""

Well, no wonder. This stuff's so confusing if you don't have a degree in "trans". I decipher that as "The machine, like many human beings, thought "[woman-acting-as-a-man]" meant "[man-acting-as-a-woman].". Did I get that right?

mccullough said...

I was hoping for Tony Curtis from Some Like It Hot

CJinPA said...

At least Wired has its priorities straight - er, correct.

Levi Starks said...

The author of confusion.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Aggie-
Agree that they try to mess normies up by manipulating language. It's a basic tool for lefties of all types.
Best way to keep one's mind straight is to substitute "pretend" or "fake" whenever they say or write "trans."
Good because it's true, and useful.

Old and slow said...

I am just so goddamned sick of all this insanity. Remember how crazy and implausible the trans business sounded back when it began? They seem to have pulled off the normalization pretty quickly.

Lilly, a dog said...

"Feminine trans woman" is only a strange phrase until you see one.

O Canada


Breezy said...

That’s awesome, RideSpaceMountain!

AlbertAnonymous said...

Well done professor! You’ve combined two topics about which I give No Shits!

Happy Thursday!

Caroline said...

I don’t call it “stereotypes”. I call it “statistical likelihood”.

gilbar said...

serious questions (that y'all don't want to hear)..
WHY would *i* vote for a trans politician?
WHAT do THEY bring to the table?
WHAT, besides "trans awareness", and "trans Activism", and "trans philia; do they bring to the table?

I've learned (well, i've been TOLD), that What Defines a woman is:
Pink frilly dresses, LOTS of lipstick, mindless giggling, smirking and shaking..

Knowing THAT; a better question is: WHY would *i* vote for ANY woman?

Duke Dan said...

Generative AI requires words to mean things. Makes sense for it to be confused by woke nonsense.

Milo Minderbinder said...

Interesting. AI in the pretending field is sort of like pretending-squared.... What an unbelievable waste of time.

Only reality is reality.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

They will never get these things right, because the whole point of them is that the subjects want to be thought about and fussed over constantly. The ground shifts so that that you have to spend your day reassuring them how important they are by keeping up with their incremental differences. It's a mug's game.

An enormous percentage are Borderline Personality Disorder or Autism Spectrum Disorder, which are different conditions but share the trait of hyperfocus of their internal impressions of How Things Should Be and inflexibility about that. Many people with those conditions learn to manage this in order to lead happier lives rather than trying to improve their lives by making everyone else miserable (because at least it's attention).

Allow the punchline "What? And give up show biz?" to occur to you when you read about these folks.

n.n said...

Trans/neo-gender (i.e. masculine, feminine) or a state or process of divergence from sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation) through surgical, medical, or grooming corruption.

Todd said...

Silly me. I thought I heard them say [for years and years] that LGBTQ people are "just like me" and are "normal people" so why is this person specifically asking for "lesbian women" or "trans women", aren't they "just women"? Or does the author(s) not believe their own rhetoric?

Fancy that...

PM said...

Emphasis on Artificial.

rhhardin said...

Plumbing isn't the important part. It's emotional wreck vs cool analytical mind.

A gay guy has a stylized cool analytical mind.

The Vault Dweller said...

If anyone hasn't seen it, Matt Walsh's documentary, "What is a woman?" is actually pretty good at highlighting how intellectually weak, internally inconsistent, and unchallenged modern trans-ideology is. Despite this, it doesn't come off as critical a lot of Matt Walsh's public commentary is. For most of it he is posing as a sympathetic figure and asking various trans-advocates basic questions. A lot of these folks' answers to, "What is a woman?" are things like, "Anyone who identifies as a woman." If pressed further on their definition of woman in their response, they respond with things like, "Identifying as a woman means identifying with more feminine qualities or characteristics." If asked what what does feminine mean, they respond with something like, "It means relating to normally womanly characteristics."

n.n said...

It's okay, the professionals are also confused.

Most gender-confused children grow out of it, landmark 15-year study concludes - as critics say it shows being trans is usually just a phase for kids

The science has been consistent over more than 40 years. Conflation of sex, gender, and social roles has been a model for progress. #HateLovesAbortion

gilbar said...

Assistant Village Idiot said...
They will never get these things right, because the whole point of them is that the subjects want to be thought about and fussed over constantly.

Todd said...
Silly me. I thought I heard them say [for years and years] that LGBTQ people are "just like me"

Shouldn't the LGBTQ people be wanting a trans day of INVISIBILITY?
If (IF) they're not just burlesque characters, wearing girlface.. Shouldn't they blend IN?

maybe I'll start believing trans people, when they QUIT Playing Dress Up
[Trans: MORE Than Just a Frilly Dress]

iowan2 said...

Gender nothing, it is a social construct. Until it is politically inconvenient. Then Gender is EVERYTHING.


I DONT CARE about your particularized, personal fetish.


until you insist on messing with children. Then I have REAL issues with your mental illness.

tim in vermont said...

"OK. That's good enough. I'm done whining." - Words you will never hear from them.

The Vault Dweller said...

with how a feminine trans woman might express herself: a pink suit, pink lipstick, and long, frizzy hair"

Is that what frizzy hair is supposed to look like? I thought that would be wavy hair. I always thought of frizzy hair as more wild, untamed, and yet suffering under the oppressive yoke of static charge repulsion.

Leland said...

Aggie, I agree with your point, but I think you miss one other aspect in the world of any question can be outrage. This person asked AI for a stereotypical trans and got “purple hair”, and of course AI had to get the from society so why does society think this is how you identify trans people? The reality is that is but one stereotypical thing they do that others and AI happen to notice. That shouldn’t be wrong for us to notice, but it will be. Except we notice other things like a “square jaw” or maybe an Adam’s Apple, and if we let our eyes wander, bulges in the chest or crotch. That’s why it has to be a basic human right to have gender surgery to fix these noticeable things. The problem is the surgery still won’t resolve all the noticeable traits, and if we can recognize the reality, then we ruin the pretense that a person has changed their gender.

Mason G said...

"A lot of these folks' answers to, "What is a woman?" are things like..."

Matt did a good job of letting his interviewees talk themselves in circles, some of them ended the interview when they finally realized the absurdity of the argument they were supporting but didn't want to actually put into words while on camera.

RideSpaceMountain said...

@Breezy

You're welcome. Here's one of Washington drinking whiskey sours and looking stylish, probably at some shithole Wait'll you see my Teddy Roosevelt collection. I literally made him dig the Panama Canal with his bare hands!

Joe Smith said...

The world does not revolve around your perversions.

Keep it to yourself.

And the chick in pink has man-hands...

Two-eyed Jack said...

Why is a trans man elected official white?
Isn't that the real issue here?
Huh?
Huh?

Adam2Smith said...

I can never remember which trans is which. Is it the origin or the destination?

Because I don't care.

dbp said...

The way these AI image generation tools should work, is that take a bunch of existing images and associate the descriptions with the images. Unless somebody puts their thumb on the scale, the results will be stereotypes, because stereotypes exist for a reason.

They should leave it at that, otherwise you get a distorted version of reality, like Here

Indigo Red said...

I'm confused.

RaleighDog said...

Maybe I should lone my decoder ring to AI - the one I have been using for years. Every time it sees "trans" it changes it to "fake".

Hassayamper said...

why is this person specifically asking for "lesbian women" or "trans women", aren't they "just women"? Or does the author(s) not believe their own rhetoric?

If you want to have some fun, find a loudmouthed female social-justice warrior who is an actual biological woman, and tell her she looks stunning, and oh my gosh you are so brave, and I'm an ally of trans folx and you can count on me to stand by you, and so on.

Don't miss the chance to call her a horrible transphobe if she says anything remotely like "But, but, I'm a REAL woman!"

Hey Skipper said...

"The writer wants A.I. to know that an ersatz woman does not have to lean into femininity."

FIFY

Smilin' Jack said...

“That seems pretty good, except for the egregious mistake: The machine, like many human beings, thought "trans man" meant "trans woman."”

How do you know?

Hey Skipper said...

"Ersatz woman" eliminates the possibility confusion, which is the consequence of describing the situation precisely.

Rabel said...

A more realistic AI image representation of typical trans men and women would be a net negative for the movement. Good. Bring it on.

Also, I appreciate a woman with a strong jawline and think, for example, that Angie Harmon is a beauty. Sigourney too.

Also too, when they first started putting CGI in animated movies, getting the hair right was an issue. Looks like it still is for AI. Blurring and lack of definition is usually a tell. You might not detect that on your iPhone but with a good monitor it's obvious.

JAORE said...

OK, AI give me portrait of a MAGA Republican.

Wny bets it includes Neanderthal features.

BUT what about a gay male MAGA type. I envision the sci-fi trope where the computer melts down.

Don't trust AI. AI is an asshole.

Rocco said...

Adam2Smith said...
"I can never remember which trans is which."

Manual/standard = has clutch & clutch pedal, standard gearsets, shifting by the driver required.
Automatic = torque converter (no clutch/pedal), planetary gearsets, shifting optional.

DSGs are "intertrans" with properties of both.

HTH

Darury said...

It wasn't that long ago that Target decided to eliminate the "girls" and "boys" toy sections. Now if you son wants to play with a doll or your daughter wants a truck, they must be trans even if they are 4. You should immediately start them on irreversible drugs to stop puberty and dress them in the gender they identify with. But of course, there's no such thing as a slippery slope when we start discarding norms.

rehajm said...

Bostonians have lived with this kind of confusion for a long time- I-95 South is also 128 North….

Howard said...

How many transceivers does RHHardin have?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

What would happen if an AI misgendered a trans?

Lucien said...

I’d suggest substituting “counterfeit” for “trans”, but Hey Skipper beat me to the punch with “ersatz”.

rehajm said...

Maybe AND a cross dresser?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

I am still confused about how gay men can be portrayed both as spiffy dressers and as having "ripped abs." Surely not at the same time?

Sydney said...

I learned long ago on this blog, in the comment section, that the way to keep the biology straight is to substitute “not” for “trans.” It has worked well for me.

boatbuilder said...

So woke-programmed super genius AI is confused.

This 64 year old not especially brilliant guy sympathizes.

The Vault Dweller said...

Blogger Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
I am still confused about how gay men can be portrayed both as spiffy dressers and as having "ripped abs." Surely not at the same time?

Extraordinary Crop Tops

Mason G said...

I learned long ago on this blog, in the comment section, that the way to keep the biology straight is to substitute “not” for “trans.” It has worked well for me.

"Cis = normal" which leads to "Trans = not normal" is another way to look at it.

Joe Smith said...

'I learned long ago on this blog, in the comment section, that the way to keep the biology straight is to substitute “not” for “trans.” It has worked well for me.'

The word 'Fake' also works...

walter said...

AI does AG

Ralph L said...

I got an email from a Timothy Elizabeth W____ today. Shades of Stanley Ann Dunham!

Jamie said...

First, that is not "frizzy" hair.