# Is it unethical (for AI) to invent fake people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [June 5, 2023, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004 "2023-06-05T00:55:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/41 "2023-06-06T05:22:43Z")
Today I finally got around to making a Microsoft account so I could use Bing Dall-E. I had seen too many awesomely awful images to resist. So I tried that prompt (Sad mother counting coins at the supermarket because she is poor.) there. [![](https://i.postimg.cc/tJRZj9Tw/counting1.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/tJRZj9Tw/counting1.jpg) The first thing I learned is the AI doesn’t grasp the age of a mother (or the size of a shopping cart). The second thing I learned is that changing “mother” to “moth” still gives the same result as “mother”. I had to go with a sad butterfly counting coins (or caterpillar). “Monster” does gives you monsters, though. [![](https://i.postimg.cc/rmkRf1L8/counting2.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/rmkRf1L8/counting2.jpg) Among other explorations I discovered that the sad mother could be counting other things, such as spiders or weird pink wrinkled spheres. [![](https://i.postimg.cc/hvmqG5jn/counting3.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/hvmqG5jn/counting3.jpg) And instead of being sad, the mother can be screaming while she counts her coins. Or instead of counting coins, the sad mother could be eating. [![](https://i.postimg.cc/PqZ8b693/counting4.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/PqZ8b693/counting4.jpg) My take-away from these trials is (as always) generative AI is fun. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/42 "2023-06-06T06:16:37Z")
I messed with Midjourney for a bit. One of the hardest issues is that MJ (and other AI) has no concept of “a small pile” or “a few” so women would be granted a dragon-like horde of coins. Eventually I got this out of: _Woman at store counter counting pennies, sad, poverty, ten coins, by Alessio Albi --ar 3:2 --s 600_ [![](https://i.imgur.com/EKDiTsQ.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/EKDiTsQ.png) That didn’t really say “Shopping” to me though so I saved it, loaded it into Stable Diffusion and played with a little inpainting to get this: [![](https://i.imgur.com/1Ib6NKx.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/1Ib6NKx.png) Better, though it still needs some work. But it’s 1am so I probably shouldn’t spend all my sleeping hours tinkering with an image for the hell of it. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/43 "2023-06-06T11:26:35Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Better, though it still needs some work. The fingers do average out to five per hand. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/44 "2023-06-06T13:40:23Z")
It looks to me like the folks using AIs to get the images they want are needing to put in more effort than the folks doing searches of stock images to get the images they want. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/45 "2023-06-06T15:30:32Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Having hundreds or thousands of times as much propaganda as now will essentially drown out all non-AI non-propaganda sources of public discourse. The tiny percentage of non-AI non-propaganda that exists now will remain. There’s no room for any more propaganda, AI or non-, not to mention no room for non-propaganda which is in pretty short supply anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004/46 "2023-06-06T16:27:55Z")
Yeah, whatever limits there’s been to propaganda in the past few years, it certainly wasn’t “Can’t find enough suitable stock photos for our Instagram posts”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-unethical-for-ai-to-invent-fake-people/985004.md?page=2)