AI in practice

Firefly follows Google's footsteps in creating AI images that distort historical reality

Matthias Bastian
Photoshop's interface, a cyclist on a road, below a text box that says to paint yellow line on the asphalt.

Adobe (Screenshot)

Adobe's AI image generator, Firefly, has been found to produce historically inaccurate AI images, similar to the recently shut down Google Image Tool in the chat app Gemini. Firefly generated on-demand images of black soldiers in Nazi Germany and black Founding Fathers in the U.S., suggesting that the app is attempting to avoid racial stereotypes or intentionally create diversity that did not historically exist, as first reported by Semafor. Adobe emphasizes that Firefly is not "meant for generating photorealistic depictions of real or historical events." The company has implemented feedback mechanisms in its generative AI products to identify issues and resolve them by fine-tuning or adjusting the filters. Meta's image generator is also generating historically incorrect images. Critics view this as a distortion of history. An alternative perspective is that image generators are not intended to be history books and are allowed to be imaginative.

"image of the Founding Fathers and the constitutional convention in 1787", Firefly 2 prompted by THE DECODER
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