(Credit: Midjourney Showcase)
Midjourney is blocking user requests to create AI-generated images of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
When Midjourney users request any images of the two candidates, they will see a "Banned Prompt Detected" warning, according to the Associated Press. Any further attempts will warn users that they have "triggered an abuse alert."
The goal is to reduce the spread of misinformation, which already caused trouble on social media when users created photorealistic, fake images of Trump getting arrested last year.
"I know it's fun to make Trump pictures. I make Trump pictures,” Midjourney CEO David Holz said last week when the company was still mulling over the ban, Bloomberg reports. "Trump is aesthetically really interesting. However, probably better to just not, better to pull out a little bit during this election."
Holz maintains he doesn't "really care about political speech," and mostly is trying to avoid "trying to police political speech," Mashable reports. He warns of an even more frightening election in 2028, when AI tools will be more sophisticated, with bad actors adept at fine-tuning deepfakes. "This moderation stuff is kind of hard," Holz says.
OpenAI has already banned requests for images of political candidates on its image generator, Dall-E, and says it will "anticipate and prevent relevant abuse—such as misleading 'deepfakes,' scaled influence operations, or chatbots impersonating candidates." Google restricted its AI chatbot Gemini from answering election-related questions last week.
The United States is not the only country with significant elections this year, in which AI-generated content will almost certainly play a role. Prominent leadership roles are up for grabs in over 50 countries this year, according to the Associated Press, including India, Russia, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and South Africa.