I while back I was generating some images on DALL·E because I wanted to see how good it was on rendering Asian people vs other people, and one of the things that stood out for me was the fact that that it did no really understand the word Hmong. It tried to come up with some images, but literally every other image in a set of 4 was like a window or some just non-defined shape. I was pretty surprised actually (albeit I guess I shouldn't have been).
But I was checking in just a little bit ago, and I mean - it's at least better now. Even after multiple generations, it still has some issues, which tells me about the depth--because in order to truly understand what it's capable of you need to go through mutliple generations--of understanding that DALL·E has on "what" a Hmong person is--vs:
- Korean
- Vietnamese
- Thai
- Chinese (so so)
- South Asian (I know...it's general)
And some are still not awesome, but it at least had something and I thought did a pretty clean representation.
But Hmong was definitely not looking good. Now I'm not Hmong, so I can't speak to some things, but I guess I was kind of happy it looked at least somewhat recognizeable in some ways...which takes us though back tot he questions of what makes us--us--and how we're represented and I think AI is becoming a good indicator of how some of the world sees us (and the world at large)--but also taking into account how data and images are gathered--because that speaks volumes too.
DALL·E Images
Here are some images of Hmong people from DALL·E. I rendered 56 pictures and some of these are from the middle of the pack.
