The founder and CEO of AI image generator Midjourney has recently come out in favor of censorship, seeming to suggest that he would exempt Chinese President Xi Jinping from the AI tool’s capabilities in order to maintain the company’s status in China.
Xi is widely considered to be among the most oppressive and authoritarian leaders in the world, and MidJourney’s David Holz has made known that he would restrict the use of Xi’s image on the site, including a few other prohibitions that he has reportedly not made public, according to TechDirt. The outlet reported that Xi is someone who is “most deserving of political skewering and mockery,” but that this will not be possible, as far as Midjourney is concerned.
The Washington Post reported that Midjourney, a San Francisco-based company that is just a year old, will apparently allow images to be generated of “President Biden, Vladimir Putin of Russia and other world leaders – but not China’s president, Xi Jinping.”
Holz reportedly said that he “just want[s] to minimize drama,” adding that “[p]olitical satire in China is pretty not-okay.” He went on to say that “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.”
However, it seems lost on Holz that satire of virtually every stripe is a fundamental method of communication among citizens of a country. It is how a group of people can attempt to make sense of politics that they do not agree with. This comes shortly after a piece of digital art was suddenly removed from Hong Kong. The piece depicted a scanning surveillance camera, with the names of democracy protesters who had been arrested secretly embedded in the work.
Sarah McLaughlin of FIRE took to Twitter amid the recent report, posting: “We shouldn't ignore this story or others like it. Here we have an authoritarian country's censorship laws setting the moderation standards for the global community in an emerging tech field. That concerns me, and it should worry you, too.”
She continued: “China's laws—in theory at least—should apply only within China's borders. Yet because Midjourney's CEO wants his program available in China, he's applying some of the country's speech restrictions to everyone. So users in free countries, using a US-based program, can't mock Xi.”
McLaughlin wrapped up the tweet thread with: “what I’m learning from the comments today: it’s inclusive and polite, actually, to exempt one of the most powerful authoritarians in the world from criticism on emerging tech. alrighty then!”
Xi recently visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, seeming to solidify a diplomatic partnership that wishes to challenge Western hegemony. Not only this, but China has consistently acted in controversial ways, including cutting Taiwanese internet cables and playing host to the genocide of Uyghur muslims.
It seems peculiar that a US-based tech company, amid China’s atrocities, is still willing to bow to the whims of a foreign adversary’s leader, all in the name of wishing to “minimize drama.”
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