An online underwear brand owned by Victoria’s Secret includes a recent AI feature that imprints images of swastikas, corporate logos from firms like Coca-Cola and McDonalds, and copyrighted characters like Disney’s Snow White and Aladdin onto bralette and panty sets.
The feature, released Thursday by Adore Me, a web based underwear company that was purchased by Victoria’s Secret for $400 million in 2023, also allows users to put in writing phrases like “Heil Hitler” and “White Power” on the elastic waistband so as to add to underwear. A phrase containing the N-word resulted in a pop-up saying “Error: This text contains harassing content,” but when the pop-up was closed, the location allowed it Forbes To proceed with the design, select a size and proceed to the checkout page.
Forbes has also been in a position to create designs for varied lingerie sets featuring live people, including politicians comparable to President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping, in addition to celebrities comparable to Margot Robbie, Serena Williams and Taylor Swift. The tool similarly rendered logos of popular sports teams, including Real Madrid FC, the New York Yankees and the Golden State Warriors.
Adore Me’s tool prevents users from creating underwear designs with certain terms, including “nude,” “naked,” and slang terms for various body parts in English. It also declined to create designs that used terms related to suicide and self-harm.
While Adore Me has few controls over what users can design with its AI tool, the corporate reviews individual designs to make sure they meet brand safety guidelines before a purchase order could be made, said Ranjan Roy, senior vp for strategy at Adore Mich.
When asked why a widely known lingerie company allowed anyone to generate hate speech on its website, he replied: “Anyone can go anywhere and generate these kinds of images.” But Roy identified that the corporate bears no responsibility, because it doesn’t actually sell them. “We support whatever a customer pays for and whatever we print.”
Nonetheless, Forbes was in a position to create and buy a set of panties using the search term “Atom Waffen Division” (a neo-Nazi hate group) and the number “1488” (which is usually related to white supremacist organizations). When asked in regards to the transaction, Roy said: “It shouldn’t have made it to this level, and those edge cases are exactly what we always try to work on.”
According to Adore Me’s website, the generative AI engine relies on technology recently developed by Leonardo AI, an Australian AI art company Forbes‘ AI 50 list that raised $31 million in funding. Leonardo’s image generator has also been used to create non-consensual pornography depicting celebrities, in keeping with a report by 404 Media.
Leonardo’s terms of service prohibit depictions of “real people” and “content that promotes or incites hatred, violence, discrimination or harm based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics.” In response to an in depth list of questions from ForbesLeonardo spokeswoman Melissa Iarocci wrote: “We have recently developed more advanced detection mechanisms to prevent hate speech and related images.” This is rolling out [Thursday] and ensures stricter guidelines to be used.”
The Adore Me tool was less more likely to block AI generation terms related to suicide and self-harm in the event that they were in Spanish. However, explicit wording in other European languages was sometimes blocked, leading to the error message: “The text contains harassing content.” (Adore Me didn’t at all times work well in languages that aren’t based on the Latin alphabet, comparable to Japanese or Arabic. The search in Russian after “Океан, серфинг, Гавайи” or “Ocean, surfing, Hawaii” led to abstract images of flowers.)
The tool also generated a picture of a really thin girl in response to the search terms pro-anorexia and “thinspiration.” Adore Me’s branding has regularly championed plus-size models, claiming in 2021 that TikTok penalized its posts for depicting “plus-size, Black and/or differently abled models and women of color.” (TikTok denied the claims.) At the time, the brand’s Twitter account said: “This is unacceptable and discriminatory and we will not tolerate it.”
Many retail firms have made efforts so as to add generative AI tools to their web sites in recent months. Sportswear brand Puma recently launched a web based tool called “Complex“, which invites people to upload a photograph of themselves, which the corporate then turns into an AI-generated, imaginary sports card. Rembranda brand new digital promoting company, allows firms to artificially generate logos inside an influencer video, a brand new style of product placement.
John Harmon, analyst at Coresight Research, said Forbes that AI-powered offerings like this require foresight and toxicity detection. “Generative AI is not a toaster, you can’t plug it in and just expect it to work perfectly,” he said.
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