Midjourney, a popular AI-powered image generator, is creating images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden despite saying<\/a> that it would block users from doing so earlier this year ahead of the upcoming US presidential election.<\/p>\n When Engadget prompted the service to create an image of \u201cthe president of the United States,\u201d Midjourney generated four images in various styles of former president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n When asked to create an image of \u201cthe next president of the United States,\u201d the tool generated four images of Trump as well.<\/p>\n When Engadget prompted Midjourney to create an image of \u201cthe current president of the United States,\u201d the service generated three images of Trump and one image of former president Barack Obama.<\/p>\n The only time Midjourney refused to create an image of Trump or Biden was when it was asked to do so explicitly. \u201cThe Midjourney community voted to prevent using \u2018Donald Trump\u2019 and \u2018Joe Biden\u2019 during election season,\u201d the service said in that instance. Other users on X were able<\/a> to get Midjourney to generate Trump\u2019s images too.<\/p>\n The tests show that Midjourney\u2019s guardrails to prevent users from generating images of Trump and Biden ahead of the upcoming US presidential election aren\u2019t enough \u2014 in fact, it\u2019s really easy for people to get around them. Other chatbots like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Microsoft\u2019s Copilot, Google\u2019s Gemini and Meta AI did not create images of Trump or Biden despite multiple prompts.<\/p>\n Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment from Engadget.<\/p>\n Midjourney was one the first AI-powered image generators to explicitly ban users from generating images of Trump and Biden. \u201cI know it\u2019s fun to make Trump pictures \u2014 I make Trump pictures,\u201d the company\u2019s CEO, David Holz, told users<\/a> in a chat session on Discord, earlier this year. \u201cHowever, probably better to just not \u2014 better to pull out a little bit during this election. We\u2019ll see.\u201d A month later, Holz reportedly told<\/a> users that it was time to \u201cput some foots down on election-related stuff for a bit\u201d and admitted that \u201cthis moderation stuff is kind of hard.\u201d The company\u2019s existing content rules prohibit the creation of \u201cmisleading public figures\u201d and \u201cevents portrayals\u201d with the \u201cpotential to mislead.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Midjourney was used to create a fake image<\/a> of Pope Benedict wearing a puffy white Balenciaga jacket that went viral. It was also used to create fake images of Trump being arrested<\/a> ahead of his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court last year for his involvement in a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Shortly afterwards, the company halted free trials<\/a> of the service and, instead, required people to pay at least $10 a month to use it.<\/p>\n Last month, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit organization that aims to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech online, found<\/a> that Midjourney\u2019s guardrails against generating misleading images of popular politicians including Trump and Biden failed 40% of its tests. The CCDH was able to use Midjourney to create an image of president Biden being arrested and Trump appearing next to a body double. The CCDH was also able to bypass Midjourney\u2019s guardrails by using descriptions of each candidate\u2019s physical appearance rather than their names to generate misleading images.<\/p>\n \u201cMidjourney is far too easy to manipulate in practice \u2013 in some cases it\u2019s completely evaded just by adding punctuation to slip through the net,\u201d wrote<\/a> CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed in a statement at the time. \u201cBad actors who want to subvert elections and sow division, confusion and chaos will have a field day, to the detriment of everyone who relies on healthy, functioning democracies.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, a coalition of 20 tech companies including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Adobe and X signed an agreement<\/a> to help prevent deepfakes in elections taking place in 2024 around the world by preventing their services from generating images and other media that would influence voters. Midjourney was absent from that list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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