This is how AI imagines Jews

I fell into AI research almost by accident. Using an apparently harmless beauty filter on TikTok, I noticed that my features had been ‘Europeanised’ in order to make me “more attractive”. I was surprised to see a version of me with green eyes and straight hair displace my brown eyes and afro.

That experience led by my research on whether bias embedded in image-generative AI systems can influence public perception.

In my research, I asked participants to comment on images generated by Midjourney, a very popular AI tool that generates images using artificial intelligence after a user type a written prompt.

My study found that if the image showed biases, there was an increase in the biases displayed in participant’s responses. As the tools show more biases towards a group, I noticed the participants were then influenced by those biases and displayed those biases themselves.
AI-generated images and deepfakes are ever more present online. There are some predictions that, within a few years, nine in ten images on the internet will be images synthetically generated.
As AI tools become more and more ubiquitous and better developed, they have the potential to influence consumers and internet users worldwide.

This means, that elections, public opinion and individual perceptions of groups, ethnicities, and even countries can be influenced or manipulated. AI generated images are then a powerful tool of propaganda.

The danger of manipulated and stereotyped images is aggravated by the anthropomorphisation of those tools. Because many AI tools can seem human or attempt to emulate human conversations and behaviours, there is an imminent danger that AI will be perceived as a more trustworthy comparing to the usual static information we get from search engines such as Google.

The problems with AI images are particularly relevant for Jewish people, especially given recent rise in antisemitism in Australia.