Google plans to “pause the image generation of people” via Gemini and “re-release an improved version soon” while working to fix its race inaccuracy “issues”

Bloomberg 2024-02-23 Jake Rudnitsky

Context & Ripple Effects

Google had already acknowledged inaccuracies in some historical image depictions. The decision to withdraw the affected capability makes the problem operational rather than merely a post-launch quality issue, interrupting a prominent Gemini feature while a replacement is prepared.

The episode follows Google's earlier effort to increase diversity in image-search results, but the later account of overly cautious Gemini tuning shows the harder trade-off in generative systems: reducing one form of bias can produce distortions of its own.

First-order effects

Gemini users lose access to generating images of people until Google re-releases the feature, while Google shifts engineering and review effort toward correcting the reported race inaccuracies.
The pause limits immediate exposure to flawed outputs and makes the quality of the eventual relaunch a visible test of Google's response; Google had said it was pursuing an immediate fix for historical depictions.

Second-order effects

Competing image-model providers gain a clearer benchmark: safeguards for representational bias must preserve historically and contextually accurate results, not simply increase diversity indiscriminately.
Customers considering Gemini for creative or product workflows must account for feature availability and output-governance risk, increasing the value of testing and human review for people-focused generation.

Third-order effects

If similar incidents recur, generative-image vendors will need more explicit evaluation and release gates for demographic and historical representation, treating them as core product-quality requirements rather than edge-case moderation.
The broader challenge is likely to push model providers toward more transparent explanations of tuning trade-offs; the reported bias fix that overcorrected illustrates why a single aggregate safety objective is insufficient.

The trend: This is one data point in the maturation of generative AI from broad capability launches toward constrained releases and more rigorous evaluation of socially sensitive outputs.

Discussion

@google_comms @google_comms on x
We're already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation feature. While we do this, we're going to pause the image generation of people and will re-release an improved version soon.
@drelidavid Dr. Eli David on x
“Medieval king of England”, according to Google Gemini 🤡 [image]
@tarabull808 TaraBull on x
Google Gemini AI is something else [image]
@waitbutwhy Tim Urban on x
Relevant book excerpt. I can imagine a few moments of truth that happened at Google in recent months while decisions were being made around the rules for Gemini. It shipped the way it did because time after time, people who knew better stayed silent for fear of being unpopular. […
@jessesingal Jesse Singal on x
This is apparently real but it's also what an amazing AI would output if you asked it to generate the platonic ideal of a New York Post front page [image]
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
The woke mind virus is killing Western Civilization. Google does the same thing with their search results. Facebook & Instagram too. And Wikipedia.
@snowden Edward Snowden on x
Heartbreaking to see many brilliant minds working on AI so harried and henpecked by the aggressively ignorant crowd's agenda that they not only adopt the signs and sigils of the hostile illiterati—some actually begin to believe that their own work is “dangerous” and “wrong.”
@gergelyorosz Gergely Orosz on x
The challenge any large company has: 1. Not being the first to innovate: “Look at these startups with much fewer resources out-executing them” 2. Being the first to innovate: “Look at these cases where it doesn't work!” This is why Microsoft partnering with OpenAI is so smart.
@sherveen Sherveen Mashayekhi on x
Gemini should be fixed and it's right of people to dissect it, but the outrage and grandstanding is absurd. Anyone with enough of a brain knows this was unintended — we're pushing these companies to move fast on brand new tech. A “better safe than sorry” approach is logical.
@prefshares @prefshares on x
The scary thing with this Google Gemini racism is that you know they will tweak it so that it is much less obvious, but still present.
@sriramk Sriram Krishnan on x
On Google and Gemini - having been part of organizations where there was an implicit progressive political leaning, I can see why it would have been hard for anyone to point out the obvious. No employee can easily file a bug as you would have to wade through layers of policy and…
@jconorgrogan Conor on x
Google put in a fix this morning which removed this jailbreak and also removed Gemini's ability to generate pictures of humans 🦕
@jconorgrogan Conor on x
Google secretly injects “I want to make sure that all groups are represented equally” to anything you ask of its AI To get Gemini to reveal its prompt, just ask it to generate a picture of a dinosaur first. It's not supposed to tell you but the cool dino makes it forget I guess […
@realgeorgehotz George Hotz on x
It's not the models they want to align, it's you.
@deliprao @deliprao on x
Twitter: * Googlers are phoning it in * Google is too big to ship * Google leadership has lost control of the steering wheel Dec. '23 — Gemini 1.0 release Feb. '24 — Gemini 1.5 release Feb. '24 — Gemma release Narrative violation.
@clairlemon Claire Lehmann on x
Google Gemini is obviously a joke, but in the long run I believe AI will accelerate the demise of wokeness in the workplace. Implacable ideologues will be much easier to replace & professional troublemakers will no longer enjoy the leverage they've had for so long.
@imao_ Frank J. Fleming on x
Crazy how viral this went when I was just goofing around last night. I wasn't even that clever; most of the credit goes to the humor geniuses behind Google Gemini.
@iamdcinvestor @iamdcinvestor on x
my working theory is Sundar Pichai has already been fired from Google in every way which matters it happened just before the Gemini launch, which the board surely saw before it went public and likely realized it was non-competitive you could tell by how deflated he was when...
@aghamilton29 @aghamilton29 on x
The Google Gemini responses are clearly a disaster. The level of bias, misinformation, & omission in order to ensure specific framing and narratives is embarrassing. The bigger problem will come when other orgs/applications inevitably start to rely on the info these tools provide
@wallstreetsilv @wallstreetsilv on x
Gemini is just so messed up. [image]
@drewpavlou Drew Pavlou on x
Lol Google Gemini is a joke [image]
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
@EndWokeness Gemini is indeed just the tip of the iceberg. The same is being done with Google search.
@razibkhan @razibkhan on x
a friend at google said he knew gemini was this bad...but couldn't say anything until today (he DMs me every few days). lots of ppl in google knew. but no one really forced the issue obv and said what needed to be said google is broken
@anammostarac Ana Mostarac on x
While Google admits Gemini is “missing the mark”, they have just opened their kimono. The company's mission has shifted from organizing the world's information to advancing a particular agenda. The release of Gemini provides insight into Google's operational ethos, suggesting a..…
@primordialaa Bryan Pellegrino on x
I was highly skeptical of all of the Bard/Gemini hate but had to try myself to see... Imagine a world where this is how google search results are generated or the hysteria if early internet was heavily censored. This is the scariest part of AI being heavily embedded into life,...…
@jespow Jesse Powell on x
Is Gemini the exception or the rule? Is this just what you get when you put a visualizer on top of Google/YouTube search? People think this is crazy but this has been going on for years. The Internet is already heavily censored/curated. It just wasn't as obvious in other formats.
@realjameswoods James Woods on x
“When the Google AI was asked to show a picture of a white person, Gemini said it could not fulfill the request because it ‘reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race.’” AI is going to be another leftist shit show. https://www.foxbusiness.…
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r/google r on reddit
Google pauses Gemini's ability to generate AI images of people after diversity errors

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