Trump Arrest Deep Fakes Land Journalist in Midjourney Jail

Fake images of controversial US ex-president go viral causing mayhem

We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies. The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times. As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. — Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory

Eliot Higgins via Midjourney AI Image Generator. As generative AI models like Midjourney Version 5 become more powerful, questions about responsibility and ethics in handling controversial content are on the rise.

I could sense it was only a matter of time before the controversial images surfaced. As a beta tester for Midjourney’s new Version 5, I had the opportunity to rate pre-release images generated by the powerful AI model. The temptation to share some of the strikingly realistic images I encountered was strong, but I resisted and reported them to the moderators, as any responsible beta tester should.

The images I encountered during the testing phase were prompted by users, with the results ranging from deep fakes of political figures and celebrities depicted as zombies and Sith lords, to more light-hearted portrayals as burger joint employees. However, some of these images pushed the boundaries of good taste, even causing a pang of pain for the inner child in me when I saw Superman as a zombie.