Seen Christopher Nolan's movie Inception? If you haven't, it's about a thief who is given the task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO. The technology of implanting ideas is nothing new. Communist regimes were the very early countries developing mind control technologies. American psychologists have experimented with subliminal messaging including in advertising.
Let's have a quick look at the definition of the word subliminal:
- sub·lim·i·nal - of a stimulus or mental process below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone's mind without their being aware of it.
Well, you can now instruct an AI to create an "
optical illusion" (the most blatant euphemism I have seen this year). This is scary. Especially when you know that AI will soon be able to create live-action full-size motion pictures.
The picture spells the word OBEY in black if you had not noticed yet. The Stable Diffusion picture was
shared on Twitter (now X). If you step back you start seeing it, but the small version above makes it clear right away.
This is the kind of thing that you would want to see regulated, but with bad actors releasing their own models, this is not expected to be very effective, unless someone develops scalable, widespread technology that recognizes this type of thing. In the meantime, being trained against disinformation and manipulation is more valuable than ever.