Text-to-image generators have swept the web in recent months. These AI systems turn a written description into an image. So by entering “an astronaut riding a white horse,” the system turns this into an image of, well, an astronaut riding a white horse.
One of the first of these services — DALL-E developed by the Open AI Initiative--appeared early last year producing reasonably well rendered images. But advances since then have been striking. DALL-E 2, launched earlier this year, produces higher resolution images of surprising realism. Other systems look equally impressive.
Nevertheless, this technology has generated controversy because of its biases and potential for abuse. For example, ask DALLE-E 2 to produce an image of a doctor and it will show you a man in a white coat. Ask it for an image of a nurse and it will invariably produce an image of a woman.
But the approaches for tackling bias and preventing abuse are advancing slowly compared to the technology itself. And that raises the question about the challenges more advanced AI systems are likely to throw up.
