Your Face Is AI Art’s Latest Subject

DALL•E 2 is an impressive piece of technology. At its core, it is an image generator powered by AI, that can create multiple versions of anything you tell it to in an instant. If you ask it to paint you a picture of an elderly giraffe lounging on the beach, you’re likely to receive multiple images featuring just that. The same goes for something like “New York City underwater in the future.” It’s impressive, to a frightening degree, which makes it all the more concerning that developers are allowing users to upload real faces for editing purposes.

As reported by Verdict, DALL•E 2 is now allowing users to upload images of real people as part of the platform’s image generation, even though developers banned the practice in the past. Using real people with artificial intelligence image generators is a concern: “Deepfakes,” which use AI to place a person’s face on top of another in photos or videos, are becoming a real issue, since it’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real and what isn’t. It’s possible allowing DALLE•2 to work with real people will make deepfakes even easier to generate.

DALL•E 2 developers point to innocent use cases as evidence for why the practice is now being allowed again. They claim users have missed being able to use their own faces in their AI artwork to help them visualize things such as outfits or edit family photos. A surgeon even used the service to reportedly help patients “visualize results.”

In an effort to make the service as secure and private as possible, DALL•E 2 forbids uploading an image of any person without their explicit consent. That said, there’s no word on how developers would be able to enforce that rule, and an “honor system” doesn’t seem likely to deter bad actors.

Right now, DALL•E 2 is an invite-only program, which means the impacts of this rule change are certainly limited. It’s not as if anyone who stumbles upon the AI generator will be able to then upload your face to it and impersonate you. However, it’s something to keep an eye on.

Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash