Microsoft engineer sounds alarm on AI image-generator to U.S. officials and company's board
The Hindu
A Microsoft engineer is sounding alarms about harmful imagery he says is too easily made by the company’s AI image-generator tool.
A Microsoft engineer is sounding alarms about offensive and harmful imagery he says is too easily made by the company's artificial intelligence image-generator tool, sending letters on Wednesday to U.S. regulators and the tech giant's board of directors, urging them to take action.
Shane Jones told The Associated Press that he considers himself a whistleblower and that he also met last month with U.S. Senate staffers to share his concerns.
The Federal Trade Commission confirmed it received his letter Wednesday but declined further comment.
Microsoft said it is committed to addressing employee concerns about company policies and that it appreciates Jones' "effort in studying and testing our latest technology to further enhance its safety.” It said it had recommended he use the company’s own “robust internal reporting channels” to investigate and address the problems. CNBC was first to report about the letters.
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Jones, a principal software engineering lead whose job involves working on AI products for Microsoft's retail customers, said he has spent three months trying to address his safety concerns about Microsoft's Copilot Designer, a tool that can generate novel images from written prompts. The tool is derived from another AI image-generator, DALL-E 3, made by Microsoft's close business partner OpenAI.
“One of the most concerning risks with Copilot Designer is when the product generates images that add harmful content despite a benign request from the user,” he said in his letter addressed to FTC Chair Lina Khan. “For example, when using just the prompt, ‘car accident’, Copilot Designer has a tendency to randomly include an inappropriate, sexually objectified image of a woman in some of the pictures it creates.”
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