samleeecole writing : 4chan users are coordinating a posting campaign in which they use Microsoft’s AI text-image generator Bing to create racist images that they can then post on the Internet. The news shows how users can manipulate free, easy-to-use AI tools to quickly flood the internet with racist garbage, even when those tools are allegedly strictly moderated. “We make propaganda for fun. Join us, it’s comfortable,” the 4chan thread says. “MAKE, MODIFY, SHARE.”
A visual guide hosted on Imgur and linked to this article asks users to use AI image generators, edit them to add captions that make them look like political campaigns, and post them to social media sites, especially Telegram, Twitter and Instagram. 404 Media also saw these images shared on a TikTok account that has since been deleted. People’s racism is not a technological problem. But we need to pay attention to the fact that the technology is about “borrowing a programming concept” to increase racist posters 10-fold, allowing them to create more sophisticated content faster in a way we’ve never seen online previously. Perhaps more importantly, they do it with tools that are supposedly “safe” and moderated so strictly, to the point that they will not generate completely harmless images of Julius Caesar. This means we’re currently getting the worst of both worlds from Bing, an AI tool that will refuse to generate a nipple but supercharges the racists on 4chan.
