The news: The popular AI image generator Midjourney prohibits a wide range of words about the human reproductive system from being used as prompts, MIT Technology Review has found.
What does it include? The list of banned words appears to skew predominantly female, including terms such as “placenta”, “fallopian tubes” and “mammary glands”. The company says it’s banning those words as a stopgap measure to prevent people from generating shocking or gory content while they “improve things on the AI side.”
Why it matters: Midjourney’s crude ban on indications related to reproductive biology highlights how complicated it is to moderate content around generative AI systems. It also demonstrates how AI systems’ tendency to sexualize women extends to their internal organs. Read the whole story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
How your brain data could be used against you
Our senior biotech reporter Jessica Hamzelou was in Lisbon, Portugal this week to attend a scientific conference on brain stimulation. Neuroscientists, brain surgeons, psychiatrists and ethicists came together to discuss how best to use technologies that use magnetic or electrical pulses to change the way our brains work.
We’re still learning how these technologies work, but in the meantime, some are generating huge amounts of data about individuals’ brains. There is a possibility that this data could be used against people in a court of law, so it is vital that we start thinking about these uses and how to protect brain data now. Read the whole story.
