Midjourney, an AI image generator that creates realistic deepfakes, has been scrutinized recently for having a policy showing deference to China’s communist government.
The company enforces a rule that users can generate fake images of world leaders from President Biden to Vladimir Putin, but not Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In a year-old message on the chat service Discord, the CEO of Midjourney, Inc. explained why the company has that rule.
“I think we want to minimize drama,” Midjourney CEO David Holz wrote last summer. He explained that the company did not immediately ban images of Xi, but it was triggered by abuse from users.
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In this photo illustration, a Midjourney logo is seen on a smartphone screen.
“Political satire in China is pretty not-okay and at some point would endanger people in china from using the service,” he added.
“I think people in China using this tech moves a needle in the world in general (in a positive direction),” Holz argued. “i think random people on here doing Chinese political satire does very little to add to anything.”
The rule against creating deepfakes of Xi applies to all global users, not just those in China.
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David Holz speaks onstage at the Leap Motion & the Disappearing User Interface panel during the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Austin Convention Center on March 9, 2013, in Austin, Texas.
“We’re trying to be sensitive to different societies and cultures,” Holz said in August. “Political satire is pretty taboo in China and having a ton of people troll China with our system doesn’t help anyone.”
Some users in the Discord group expressed frustration about being unable to create Xi-related images.
“It sucks that the MidJourney creators are bowing to the dictator Xi Jinping,” one user wrote.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the 29th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 19, 2022. (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“It makes me uncomfortable to see so many deepfake Biden and Trump on MJ yet nothing is done. Only Xi is blocked,” another commented.
Midjourney was released in 2022 and has 11 full-time staffers, according to its website. Fox News Digital reached out to Midjourney for a statement, but has not heard back.
This photo illustration taken on January 31, 2023 shows an artificial intelligence (AI) manga artist, who goes by the name “Rootport”, wearing gloves to protect his identity, demonstrating how he produces AI manga during an interview with AFP in Tokyo. – The author of a sci-fi manga about to hit shelves in Japan admits he has “absolutely zero” drawing talent, so turned to artificial intelligence to create the dystopian saga. All the futuristic contraptions and creatures in “Cyberpunk: Peach John” were intricately rendered by Midjourney, a viral AI tool that has sent the art world into a spin, along with others such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.