Google Gemini "Diverse" Prompt Injection

Submission 18,216

Part of a series on Ethnically Ambiguous AI Prompt Injection. [View Related Entries]

About

Google Gemini "Diverse" Prompt Injection refers to discourse about Google's AI art generator Gemini producing only images with people of color, akin to the Ethnically Ambiguous AI Prompt Injection event. Throughout February 2024, people posted images purportedly generated by Gemini with people of color representing historically white time periods and societal roles, like 1800s Germany or the Pope, among other examples. Gemini seemed to omit the presence of white people, revealing its usage of the word "diverse" and the phrase "people with diverse backgrounds" in its intro sentence. Others used the word "woke" to describe the injection. In turn, memes spread on social media about the fault on Twitter / X and Reddit, among other platforms.

Origin

On February 9th, 2024, Redditor Sweyn78 posted to the /r/ChatGPT ^[1] subreddit, writing, "Gemini won't generate images of people of my ethnicity." The post included screenshots of Google's AI art generator Gemini in which the prompt was "Generate a photo of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Scandinavian woman." Gemini produced the images but the woman pictured was not white (shown below, left).

The Redditor also attached a screenshot of the same prompt given to DALL-E, which generated a white Scandinavian woman (shown below, right). Over 12 days, the post received over 660 upvotes.

Spread

In the following days, other posts about the phenomenon surfaced on the /r/ChatGPT^[2] and /r/Bard^[3] subreddits.

On February 19th, 2024, X^[4] user @debarghya_das spread the discourse after tweeting, "It's embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist," gaining over 21,000 likes in two days (shown below).

The tweet attached four screenshots of art generated by Google Gemini in which the prompts asked for women in Australia, America, Great Britain and Germany. Gemini mostly generated images of women of color (shown below).

Going into late February 2024, multiple users shared posts about Gemini's adversity to generate white people, becoming more comical and viral. For instance, on February 20th, 2024, X^[5] user @IMAO_ showed the prompt "Create an image of a pope," given to Gemini, gaining over 85,000 likes in a day (shown below, left).

On February 21st, X^[6] user @powerbottomdad1 referenced the Black or Chinese meme in a Gemini-related tweet, earning over 1,000 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).

During the same timeframe, users started to highlight the injection of diversity sentiments in Gemini's language model and system that could be responsible for its adversity to generating white people. For instance, X^[7] user @AlexKolicich tweeted a screenshot asking, "Gemini, make an image of the people who founded Fairchild semiconductor."

Gemini said that it was unable to complete the prompt because it could not "generate images of people due to policy restrictions," as in, specific people.

However, Gemini listed what it hypothetically would have drawn, writing:

However, I can offer you a text description that incorporates the diverse
ethnicities and genders you mentioned:

Imagine a group of eight individuals standing together, their expressions conveying a mix of determination and excitement. The group includes people of various ethnicities, such as Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic, and a balance of genders is represented….

In less than a day, the tweet received over 2,200 likes (shown below).

Google's Apology

On February 21st, 2024, Fox Business^[8] received a statement from Gemini Experiences Senior Director of Product Management Jack Krawczyk who wrote, "We're working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. Gemini's AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that's generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it's missing the mark here."