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Lensa’s Viral AI Art Creations Were Bound To Hypersexualize Users

Posted on by Phil Lam X

This year, it feels like artificial intelligence-generated art has been everywhere.

In the summer, many of us entered goofy prompts into DALL-E Mini (now called Craiyon), yielding a series of nine comedically janky AI-generated images. But more recently, there’s been a boom of AI-powered apps that can create cool avatars. MyHeritage AI Time Machine generates images of users in historical styles and settings, and AI TikTok filters have become popular for creating anime versions of people. This past week, “magic avatars” from Lensa AI flooded social media platforms like Twitter with illustrative and painterly renderings of people’s headshots, as if truly made by magic.

These avatars, created using Stable Diffusion — which allows the AI to “learn” someone’s features based off of submitted images — also opened an ethical can of worms about AI’s application. People discovered that the “magic avatars” tended to sexualize women and appeared to have fake artist signatures on the bottom corner, prompting questions about the images that had been used to train the AI and where they came from. Here’s what you need to know.

WHAT IS LENSA AI?
It’s an app created by Prisma Labs that recently topped the iOS app store’s free chart. Though it was created in 2018, the app became popular after introducing a “magic avatar” feature earlier this month. Users can submit 10 to 20 selfies, pay a fee ($3.99 for 50 images, $5.99 for 100, and $7.99 for 200), and then receive a bundle of AI-generated images in a range of styles like “kawaii” or “fantasy.”

The app’s “magic avatars” are somewhat uncanny in style, refracting likenesses as if through a funhouse mirror. In a packet of 100, at least a few of the results will likely capture the user’s photo well enough in the style of a painting or an anime character. These images have flooded Twitter and TikTok. (Polygon asked Prisma Labs for an estimate of how many avatars were produced, and the company declined to answer.) Celebrities like Megan Fox, Sam Asghari, and Chance the Rapper have even shared their Lensa-created likenesses.

HOW DOES LENSA CREATE THESE MAGIC AVATARS?
Lensa uses Stable Diffusion, an open-source AI deep learning model, which draws from a database of art scraped from the internet. This database is called LAION-5B, and it includes 5.85 billion image-text pairs, filtered by a neural network called CLIP (which is also open-source). Stable Diffusion was released to the public on Aug. 22, and Lensa is far from the only app using its text-to-image capabilities. Canva, for example, recently launched a feature using the open-source AI.

An independent analysis of 12 million images from the data set — a small percentage, even though it sounds massive — traced images’ origins to platforms like Blogspot, Flickr, DeviantArt, Wikimedia, and Pinterest, the last of which is the source of roughly half of the collection.

More concerningly, this “large-scale dataset is uncurated,” says the disclaimer section of the LAION-5B FAQ blog page. Or, in regular words, this AI has been trained on a firehose of pure, unadulterated internet images. Stability AI only removed “illegal content” from Stable Diffusion’s training data, including child sexual abuse material, The Verge reported. In November, Stability AI made some changes that made it harder to make NSFW images. This week, Prisma Labs told Polygon it too “launched a new safety layer” that’s “aimed at tackling unwanted NSFW content.”

Stable Diffusion’s license says users can’t use it for violating the law, “exploiting, harming or attempting to exploit or harm minors,” or for generating false information or disparaging and harassing others (among other restrictions). But the technology itself can still generate images in violation of those terms. As The Verge put it, “once someone has downloaded Stable Diffusion to their computer, there are no technical constraints to what they can use the software for.”

WHY DID AI ART GENERATORS BECOME SO POPULAR THIS YEAR?
Though this technology has been in development for years, a few AI art generators entered public beta or became publicly available this year, like Midjourney, DALL-E (technically DALL-E 2, but people just call it DALL-E), and Stable Diffusion.

These forms of generative AI allow users to type in a string of terms to create impressive images. Some of these are delightful and whimsical, like putting a Shiba Inu in a beret. But you can probably also imagine how easily this technology could be used to create deepfakes or pornography.

Source: The Verge

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None Of The Girls In These Vintage Polaroids Exist—An AI Made Them Up

Posted on by Phil Lam X

AI-generated photos of Black goth girls created with Midjourney have captivated viewers across social media with both the alluring scenes they depict and their striking realness. In recent years, imaging software bolstered by machine learning have grown uncanny in their ability to produce detailed works based on simple text prompts. With enough coaxing, models like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2 can generate pieces indistinguishable from what a human artist might create.

All it takes to get started is a concept. Text-to-image generators are trained on massive, detailed image datasets, giving them the contextual basis to create from scratch. Instruct any one of today’s popular AI image models to whip up an imaginary scene and, if all goes well, it’ll do just that. By referencing specific styles in the prompt, like a historical art movement or a particular format of photography, the models can be guided toward more refined results. They’re not perfect, though — as casual users hopping on the AI-image meme trend have found, they have a tendency to miss the mark, often hilariously.

That makes it all the more effective when the AI does get it right. Former MMA fighter and artist Fallon Fox’s AI-generated photos, which have gone viral since she posted them on Twitter and Facebook on Nov. 13, at first glance seem a look into the not-so-distant past. Black girls decked in leather and heavy eyeliner smolder in nearly two dozen snapshots from metal shows in the ‘90s. Except, these concerts never existed and neither did these girls. Midjourney conjured them up.

Fox told Screen Rant she was just trying to “show a representation of people like [herself],” a Black woman, in the metal scene through the AI experiment. She had no idea it would take off the way it did. “I put a lot of references to ‘90s-era Black goths in there,” Fox told Screen Rant regarding the AI art creation process. “I also put the scenery in there, which was of course a heavy metal concert, and I told it to use a specific type of film, which was ‘90s Polaroid. And a lot of other tweaks, too.”

It’s easy, at first, to miss the telltale signs of AI-made images in this photoset, though they eventually become glaring. Hands, in particular, have proven difficult for AI models to render, and many of the characters in the series suffer bizarre failings in this area (which Fox and social media users have been quick to point out): rubbery fingers that fuse with other objects, a multitude of tangled extra digits, out-of-place fingernails.

There are other telling details, too, like eyes that are just off and features that seem to be pasted haphazardly on. In one image, a bystander appears to have the entire lower half of his body on backward. Overwhelmingly, though, the people and places in the photos look real.

Source: Screenrant

Nick Young On His “Confused Meme” Becoming More Famous Than Him

Posted on by Phil Lam X

In this clip, Nick Young talks about his famous smiling meme, where it came from and why the image is almost more famous than he is at this point. This prompts the former NBA champion to state that he wishes there was a way for him to get paid for the meme which causes DJ Vlad to also indicate that his material often becomes memes that he doesn’t get paid for. As the discussion moves along, Nick shares what a big deal his meme has become in China, before talking about coming home and finding out that place had been burglarized.

Velma Is Officially A Lesbian In New Scooby-Doo Film, Years After James Gunn And More Tried To Make Her Explicitly Gay

Posted on by Phil Lam X

Velma is officially a lesbian.

Clips from the brand new movie “Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!,” which show the Mystery Inc. member googly-eyed and speechless when encountering costume designer Coco Diablo, have gone viral on Twitter, confirming suspicions held by the “Scooby” fan base for decades.

“OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY,” reads one tweet, which has over 100,000 likes.

It’s long been an open secret among fans and “Scooby-Doo” creatives that Velma is gay. Even James Gunn, who wrote the early live-action films, and Tony Cervone, who served as supervising producer on the “Mystery Incorporated” series, have confirmed the character’s sexuality, but they were never able to make it official onscreen.

In 2020, Gunn tweeted that he “tried” to make Velma a lesbian in the live-action movies. “In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script,” he wrote. “But the studio just kept watering it down & watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) & finally having a boyfriend (the sequel).”

Source: Variety

Desiigner On Why He Signed To Kanye, Kanye Using ‘Panda’ On ‘The Life Of Pablo’

Posted on by Phil Lam X

In this clip, Desiigner reflects back on being recruited by numerous record labels and being offered several multi-million dollar contracts. From there, the 25-year-old talks about receiving a phone call from Kanye West about using “Panda” for his album called “The Life of Pablo” and signing with his G.O.O.D. music imprint. He goes on talk about how good it felt to give back to the Brooklyn housing projects where he was raised.

Math Hoffa On Soulja Boy Mad At Vlad: Soulja Thinks He Deserves Special Treatment

Posted on by Phil Lam X

In this final clip from Math Hoffa, he started off speaking to Vlad about reaching out for advice after being caught in the middle of drama over his interviews. Math and Vlad then spoke about staying out of those types of situations, and they also addressed outside people getting mad at them. This led to Vlad addressing Soulja Boy being mad at him for interviewing the home intruder he shot, which Soulja spoke about in a viral VladTV interview.

Comedian And TV Personality Juan Joya Borja, The ‘Spanish Laughing Guy’ Meme, Has Died At 65

Posted on by Phil Lam X

Comedian and T.V. personality Juan Joya Borja, best known in America as the “Spanish Laughing Guy,” has died. Borja was 65 years old and died after what Spanish newspapers described as a “long illness.” He’d been hospitalized in 2020. 

Known as El Ristas or “The Giggles” because of his distinct laugh, Borja rose to prominence in his native Spain after being featured on a variety show called Ratones Coloraos. During an interview with host Jesus Quintero, Rojas was telling a funny story about throwing dishes into the ocean while working a job as a young man. Borja found his own story so funny that he could barely get through it between fits of laughter.

Ratones Coloraos uploaded the segment to YouTube that year and it gained popularity in Spain, but Borja’s life as a meme would come almost a decade later. Around 2014, people took the clip and uploaded it with their own subtitles completely unrelated to Borja’s original story. Typically, Borja would take the place of an employee for a large company who would cackle through a story about how stupid their boss or a customer was.

When Apple announced a new MacBook in 2015, El Ristas giggled through its poor specifications as an Apple Engineer. El Ristats stood in for every person who’d encountered a flat earther, fought with their family about Brexit, or tried to buy a new graphics card in the past year.

No matter how bad the news, Borja could help you laugh through it. He is the inverse of the Hitler downfall meme. He’s someone who tells a story or explains a concept that is so ridiculous, he can barely get through it because he’s laughing so much.

Source: Vice

Molly Yeh’s Midwestern ‘Popcorn Salad’ Recipe Gets Roasted On Twitter

Posted on by Phil Lam X

Food Network’s Molly Yeh shared the recipe for “Crunchy Snap Pea Popcorn Salad” that has divided opinion on social media. Although an overwhelming majority seemed to find nothing delectable about the popcorn salad, a few defended the food blogger and the recipe. 

The recipe video, which has gone viral on the microblogging platform with over 1.4 million views, shows Molly whipping up some popcorn salad with peas, carrots, shallots, watercress and celery leaves. The ingredients are tossed through a salad dressing made of mayonnaise, sour cream, cider vinegar, sugar and Dijon mustard.

The video has racked up 1.4 million views on Twitter, where some wondered if the video was a spoof or parody.

“Food Network is just trolling us at this point right?” asked one Twitter user. “Some kind of abomination,” another remarked.

Others pointed out that the salad dressing would turn the popcorn soggy. “I’m so confused. Doesn’t the dressing make the popcorn soggy? How do you even eat this?” a user asked. “‘Soggy popcorn, delicious!’ – Said no one ever!” another quipped. 

Source: NDTV