'Handcuffed Trump' Election Threat... US AI Company Limits 'Political Image Generation' Until Presidential Election

Midjourney Bans Presidential Candidate Image Generation for One Year
Meta and OpenAI Add Watermarks to AI-Generated Images

With the U.S. presidential election approaching this November, artificial intelligence (AI) companies are considering banning the generation of political images using their AI technologies.

According to foreign media including the UK Guardian on the 11th (local time), AI image generation company Midjourney is considering measures to prevent the creation of political images of President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. David Holz, CEO of Midjourney, stated, "We plan to prohibit or restrict the generation of images related to major presidential candidates over the next 12 months."

Another AI image generation company, Inflection AI, also announced that its chatbot 'Pi' will be prevented from making statements supporting specific political candidates.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced last week that it will label images generated by its AI to distinguish the source of specific images. This is a measure to prevent the spread of misinformation ahead of the election. OpenAI also announced plans to attach watermarks (indications that AI created the content) to deepfakes (AI-based image and voice synthesis technology). Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently expressed concern, saying, "What worries me most is the new capabilities of AI," and added, "There will be better deepfakes than in 2020."

These moves by U.S. tech companies come amid growing calls for stricter regulations on deepfakes. Fake images generated by AI, such as former President Trump in handcuffs and President Biden firing a machine gun, have circulated, raising concerns that they could threaten elections and democracy.

David Ryan Polgar, head of the nonprofit organization All Tech Is Human, pointed out, "We recognize the gap between the rapid pace of innovation and our society's ability to understand what we need to do," adding, "(We) are still moving painfully slowly."