Midjourney banned images of China President | | | | Turtles AI

  #Midjourney, an #AI image generator that creates images from natural language descriptions, has recently come under scrutiny for its ban on the creation of #images of Chinese President Xi #Jinping. Midjourney’s founder and #CEO, David #Holz, stated that the ban was enacted to “minimize drama” and to be sensitive to different societies and cultures. He added that political satire is taboo in #China and could endanger people in China who use the service. Users of Midjourney have found ways to create #deepfakes of Xi, even though his likeness is banned on the platform. Midjourney had already disabled access to its free trial version in an effort to prevent the proliferation of deepfakes on its platform. While the platform still allows the creation of images featuring world leaders, Xi is excluded. Any attempt to generate an image with his likeness or even mention his name in a prompt is strictly prohibited by Midjourney. Despite the ban, some users have found ways to create deepfakes of Xi using the /imagine function by providing the full URL of an existing photo of Xi in the prompt or by using "/blend" with two existing photos. However, some users fear that these workarounds may be policed eventually. The ban on Xi’s likeness has also caused frustration among some users, who question why Midjourney only targets Xi and not other world leaders.