No, Google’s Gemini isn’t ‘woke.’ Google overlooked a systemic problem and it backfired.

Read to the end to hear why I think the web as we know it is falling apart.

Hi, it’s Charley, and this is Untangled, a newsletter about technology and power.

Last week, I wrote about a new category of crypto project — Decentralized Physical Infrastructure or DePin — and how everything is a Ponzi in crypto, until sometimes, it’s not. I suspect that you’ll hear much more about crypto this year. Media coverage follows price action, and the token prices of many crypto projects are approaching all-time highs, with industry catalysts like the ‘Bitcoin halving’ around the corner. If you want to get ahead of the impending media coverage and become an expert in key crypto concepts and how they interact with social systems like race, gender, and power, read my latest Tiny Book, Crypto Untangled.

For the next week, you can buy both of my Tiny Books — AI Untangled & Crypto Untangled for $15 total or a 25% discount. Huzzah!

Now on to the show!

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Gemini isn’t ‘woke.’ Google overlooked a systemic problem and it backfired.

Two weeks ago, Google launched the latest version of its image generator, Gemini. Very quickly (because this is apparently what these tools are good for?), users found that Gemini generated racially and gender-diverse Nazis but wouldn’t produce images of white Nazis. Gemini resisted generating images of white people across the board. This predictably led those on the right to lambast Gemini for being ‘woke and ‘anti-white,’ and the company found itself at the center of the culture war.

Google deserves blame but it has nothing to do with ‘wokeness.’ Google took a shortcut, and added a step to the prompting process called “prompt transformation.” Basically, Google will expand your prompt, randomly using different qualifiers to counteract problematic stereotypes. As a great write-up in Time explained, Gemini “may add a variety of genders or races to the original prompt without users ever seeing that it did, subverting what would have been a stereotypical output produced by the tool.” As a result, we’re more likely to see a mix of male and female nurses, and apparently, non-white Nazis. So what is at the systemic root of these issues?