Midjourney, an AI image generator that creates realistic deepfakes, has recently come under scrutiny for policies that show respect for the Chinese Communist government.
The company enforces rules that allow users to generate fake images of world leaders from President Biden to Vladimir Putin, but not China’s President Xi Jinping.
In a message a year ago on chat service Discord, the CEO of Midjourney, Inc. explained why the company has that rule.
Midjourney CEO David Holz wrote last summer: He explained that the company did not immediately ban Xi images, but that user harassment was the trigger.
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The illustration in this photo shows the Midjourney logo on a smartphone screen.
“Chinese political satire is perfectly fine and will at some point endanger the Chinese people from using the service,” he added.
“I think the people in China using this technology are moving the needle (in a positive direction) all over the world,” argued Holz. I don’t think random people are good for anything.”
The rules against making deepfakes of Xi apply not only to users in China, but to everyone around the world.
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David Holz speaking at the Leap Motion & the Disappearing User Interface panel at the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival on March 9, 2013 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.
“We’re trying to be sensitive to different societies and cultures,” Holtz said in August. But it won’t help anyone.”
Some users in the Discord group expressed frustration at not being able to create Xi-related images.
“It’s a shame that the creators of MidJourney are bowing to dictator Xi Jinping,” wrote one user.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the 29th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC Economic Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, November 19, 2022. (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“It’s disgusting to see so many deepfakes Biden and Trump on MJ. Still not doing anything. Only Xi Jinping is blocked.”
Midjourney will be released in 2022 and has 11 full-time staff, according to its website. Fox News Digital reached out to Midjourney for a statement, but received no response.
This photographic illustration taken on January 31, 2023 shows an artificial intelligence (AI) manga artist known by the name of ‘Rootport’, wearing gloves to protect his identity and walking in Tokyo. Demonstrates how to create AI cartoons in an interview with AFP. -The creator of his upcoming sci-fi manga in Japan admits he has “no talent at all” for drawing, so he turned to artificial intelligence to create a dystopian story . All of Cyberpunk: Peach John’s futuristic contraptions and creatures are complicated by his Midjourney, the viral AI tool that disrupted the art world, along with other tools like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2. rendered.
