Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
TT

Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)

Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it has updated Gemini's AI image-creation model and would roll out the generation of visuals of people in the coming days, after months-long pause of the capability.

In February, Google had paused its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model.

The issues, where the AI model returned historical images which were sometimes inaccurate, drew flak from users.

The company said it has worked to improve the product, adhere to "product principles" and simulated situations to find weaknesses.

The feature will be made available first to paid users of the Gemini AI chatbot, starting in English and later roll out the model to bring more users and languages.

Google said it has improved the Imagen 3 model to create better images of people, but it would not generate images of specific people, children or graphic content.

OpenAI's Dall-E, Microsoft's CoPilot and recently xAI's Grok are among other AI chatbots that can now generate images.

The search engine giant also said over the coming days, subscribers to Gemini Advanced, Business and Enterprise would have access to chatting with "Gems" or chatbots customized for specific purposes.

Users can write specific instructions for particular purposes and create a Gem, saving them time from rewriting prompts for repetitive use cases.



TikTok Must Face Lawsuit over 10-year-old Girl's Death, US Court Rules

A view shows the office of TikTok after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the US assets of the short-video app or face a ban, in Culver City, California, March 13, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
A view shows the office of TikTok after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the US assets of the short-video app or face a ban, in Culver City, California, March 13, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
TT

TikTok Must Face Lawsuit over 10-year-old Girl's Death, US Court Rules

A view shows the office of TikTok after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the US assets of the short-video app or face a ban, in Culver City, California, March 13, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
A view shows the office of TikTok after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the US assets of the short-video app or face a ban, in Culver City, California, March 13, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake

A US appeals court has revived a lawsuit against TikTok by the mother of a 10-year-old girl who died after taking part in a viral "blackout challenge" in which users of the social media platform were dared to choke themselves until they passed out, Reuters reported.

While a federal law typically shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by users, the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled the law does not bar Nylah Anderson's mother from pursuing claims that TikTok's algorithm recommended the challenge to her daughter.

US Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz, writing for the three-judge panel, said that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 only immunizes information provided by third parties and not recommendations TikTok itself made via an algorithm underlying its platform.

She acknowledged the holding was a departure from past court rulings by her court and others holding that Section 230 immunizes an online platform from liability for failing to prevent users from transmitting harmful messages to others.

But she said that reasoning no longer held after a US Supreme Court ruling in July on whether state laws designed to restrict the power of social media platforms to curb content they deem objectionable violate their free speech rights.

In those cases, the Supreme Court held a platform's algorithm reflects "editorial judgments" about "compiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants." Shwartz said under that logic, content curation using algorithms is speech by the company itself, which is not protected by Section 230.

"TikTok makes choices about the content recommended and promoted to specific users, and by doing so, is engaged in its own first-party speech," she wrote.

TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

Tuesday's ruling reversed a lower-court judge's decision dismissing on Section 230 grounds the case filed by Tawainna Anderson against TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

She sued after her daughter Nylah died in 2021 after attempting the blackout challenge using a purse strap hung in her mother's closet.

"Big Tech just lost its 'get-out-of-jail-free card,'" Jeffrey Goodman, the mother's lawyer, said in a statement.

U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Matey, in a opinion partially concurring with Tuesday's ruling, said TikTok in its "pursuit of profits above all other values" may choose to serve children content emphasizing "the basest tastes" and "lowest virtues."

"But it cannot claim immunity that Congress did not provide," he wrote.