Bing's AI Image Generator Is Rendered 'Essentially Dead' By Censorship

It's been a wild time in AI art and meme generation, as Bing's Image Creator was unleashed upon the world in recent weeks and was instantly used to create some problematic (and oftentimes, quite funny) imagery.

Since emerging, social media users were able to get Bing's tool to make things like Shinji and Asuka doing 9/11 and a slew of offensive Pixar movies, among other things.

However, in an apparent effort to stop all the edgy content, Bing and Microsoft may have rendered its DALL-E 3 AI image generator almost unusable — at least according to users.

As one can see in the above meme, the user who created this didn't exactly write "Create Full Metal Alchemist characters doing 9/11." Instead, they used a series of workarounds to make it look like the characters were flying towards the Twin Towers. Creators of various other "edgy" memes with the generator were able to employ several workarounds to get images such as a poster for Pixar's Caust.

Over the past few days, users of Bing AI have reported that they can barely get the generator to create anything, as completely innocuous terms are being flagged for "Unsafe image content." On Reddit, one user complained that they couldn't generate images of "Michael Jackson," claiming they wanted to make images of him as a heavy metal artist.

Another complained that prompts such as "Fish eye lens shot of woman walking away from the camera towards a seven foot tall macaque" were deemed "unsafe" by the generator. Furthermore, attempting to create too many images the generator deems "unsafe" will result in a ban from using it.

Additional users wrote that even using Bing's "Surprise me!" function, which has the website generate a random image, has the site return an "unsafe" error message — which would seem to imply the site is censoring itself.

Bing and Microsoft have yet to comment on the complaints of its users, though several have voiced that they're getting fed up with being unable to use the product for completely benign purposes.