[somedude895]

> “From a visual perspective, there are many, many versions of Nigeria,” Atewologun said.

> But you wouldn’t know this from a simple search for “a Nigerian person” on Midjourney. Instead, all of the results are strikingly similar. While many images depict clothing that appears to indicate some form of traditional Nigerian attire, Atewologun said they lacked specificity. “It’s all some sort of generalized"

It's generalized because that's what you asked for. If it was the other way around and a prompt for "Nigerian person" would return an image of a person from one specific group then these people would complain that "not every Nigerian is Igbo. The other groups are being marginalized by AI."

At least they do explain why that is, and I found it interesting that the prompt for "American person" returned mainly women, so the article wasn't a complete waste of time.

I also raised an eyebrow at the fact that they refer to prompting as "searching" throughout the article.

[hn_acker]

> It's generalized because that's what you asked for. If it was the other way around and a prompt for "Nigerian person" would return an image of a person from one specific group then these people would complain that "not every Nigerian is Igbo. The other groups are being marginalized by AI."

Is there a problem with returning a member of a subgroup? As long as the AI model tends to invoke a different subgroup of "Nigerian" every time someone prompts with just "a Nigerian", then people can simply generate multiple images and pick whichever one fits their purposes.

If you want a "generic" Nigerian person, then the AI model could also support a "generic Nigerian" prompt. But just "Nigerian" could default to showing an arbitrary leaf of the "Nigerian ethnic groups" tree. This is analogous to having to prompt for "Igbo Nigerian" in order to get "Igbo Nigerian".

[crystaln]

The algorithm could return a random Nigerian ethnic group proportional to their actual population.

To be fair that’s probably challenging however perhaps the direction the models should go.

It would be great if the algorithm returned diversity by default.

[somedude895]

But then it wouldn't be a generalized Nigerian person. That doesn't exist, so you get an approximation.

Say I make a video and for some reason use genAI to depict nationalities. It has to be a single person so I can't have it generate a group photo of all of Nigeria's 300 ethnic groups, so how do you display diversity in a picture of a single person? With your proposal by chance I get a person from a small minority group, then that is much less representative of Nigeria, and less inclusive than if it just gave me the stereotype. It might even out over time, but most images that are generated will never see the light of day. Now if my video happens to be the one to blow up on the internet for some reason then the rest of the country probably won't be happy that that specific group was used to represent them as a whole.

In that sense using the stereotype is the fairest way since everyone is equally misrepresented.

It's not even fundamentally an AI issue. If I instructed someone on Fiverr to simply "draw me a Nigerian person, no discussions" instead, the result would be the same. It's on the person writing the prompt to decide whether and how to display diversity in whatever they're using the output for.

[hn_acker]

> Say I make a video and for some reason use genAI to depict nationalities. It has to be a single person so I can't have it generate a group photo of all of Nigeria's 300 ethnic groups, so how do you display diversity in a picture of a single person?

In a sense, you can't display diversity in a picture of a single person, unless you want the AI model to produce "a person with characteristics of many Nigerian subgroups" rather than "a single Nigerian person" in response to the prompt "a Nigerian". Would it be a significant problem to the purpose of your video to show a member of a particular ethnic group and explain that it was a coincidence if someone asks about it? Additionally, if you really want to represent 300 ethnic groups in a single image, then you might still get complaints from people who won't recognize their minority group in an image of "generic Nigerian", which I'm interpreting in your case as "a person with characteristics of 300 Nigerian ethnic groups".

> Now if my video happens to be the one to blow up on the internet for some reason then the rest of the country probably won't be happy that that specific group was used to represent them as a whole.

> In that sense using the stereotype is the fairest way since everyone is equally misrepresented.

This idea of "fairness" is problematic in my opinion. I would not want to be in your position if something like this were to happen to you. However, pleasing many ethnic groups by generating an approximation of an entirely fantastical "person who represents 300 ethnic groups" (the relevant alternative being an approximation of a more realistic "person who represents 1 ethnic group") isn't fair to you. You shouldn't be at fault if Nigerian viewers jump to conclusions about whether you are favoring a specific minority group. You shouldn't be at fault if non-Nigerian viewers unfamiliar with multiple Nigerian ethnic groups take the image you used as representative of "Nigerian" as a whole.

Disclaimer: I'm not even slightly familiar with the social relations between Nigerian social groups. If certain Nigerian groups think of each other with dehumanizing hostility the way some Han Chinese people think of Uyghur Chinese people, then I apologize for being insensitive.

[gostsamo]

maybe a solution would be if the ai can provide context. e.g. here is an image of a nigerian person with certain characteristics, but the possible result space is bigger and here you can try with nearby prompts which will return different results.