Ableism in Machine Learning Algorithms

I’m using Midjourney to generate some character images for a project. Yes, I know Midjourney exploits artists. yes, I know it’s bad generally. The thing is - I have aphantasia. Midjourney is genuinely a really useful tool for me. I would love to be able to pay an artist to make concept art for me. I can’t afford that, because my disability has left me with very little money. This is how capitalism hurts artists in every way it can.

Anyway, I was trying to generate images of steampunk students with various disabilities. Midjourney was…. okay at some of them, but I ran into this funny/depressing issue when I tried to get it to output a student with facial scarring.

I could get significant facial scarring whilst having the student scowling and being really grim and serious

This is the result for the prompt: “a happy pale-skinned steampunk student with severe burn scars”

And this was the result for: “a smiling pale-skinned steampunk student with severe burn scars”

And… notice how we’ve gone from… androgynous but vaguely masculine scowling and severely burned people, to definitely more gender coded smiling people with barely any facial scarring?

So, I thought… okay. Let’s do a minor variant on an image. So I picked this image:

Prompt: “a happy pale-skinned steampunk student with severe burn scars”

And told Midjourney to do a minor variation, with the prompt: “a happy smiling pale-skinned steampunk student with severe burn scars”

And…. oh, look, almost all of the scars are gone. And they’re all femme coded now.

Midjourney apparently can’t conceive of a world where someone could have serious facial scarring, and be generally a happy person. Or even just smiling because they heard a joke or something.

That’s really forked up.