Comment by feoren
> We would be pissed if a human artist did that
No, I would not be pissed if a human artist drew an Asian Viking. Do you get pissed when a human artist draws a white Jesus? Why are we justifying internet outrage over an Asian Viking when people have been drawing this middle-eastern Jew as white for centuries?
> A human artist can adjust things to the unrealistic setting, but unless presented with a really good reason, will not change the core traits of what makes a Viking a Viking.
If you asked Matt Stone and Trey Parker to draw a Viking, are you sure it would contain the "core traits of what makes a Viking a Viking?" What if you asked Picasso to draw a Viking? The Vikings in The Simpsons would be yellow, and nobody would complain. Would you be offended if you asked Hokusai to draw a Viking and it came out looking Asian? Vikings didn't even have those stupid horned helmets that everyone draws them with! Is their dumb, historically inaccurate horned helmet a core part of what makes a Viking a Viking? What the hell are we even talking about? It's crystal clear that all of these "historical accuracy" drums are only ever beaten when some white person is offended that non-white people exist. Otherwise, nobody gives a shit about historical accuracy. There's a fucking Kaiju in the image!
Like any artist, Gemini had a particular style. That style happened to be a multi-cultural one, and what we learned is that a multi-culture style is absolutely enraging to people unless it results in more Whiteness.
Consider elves instead of Vikings. People would also be offended if an AI drew elves as black people with pointy ears. There's no "a human artist should know that elves have to be white" bullshit defense there. There's no historical accuracy bullshit. There's only racism.
The thing is that if a human draws an Asian Viking, he has to do it with intent. It is neither historically accurate nor matching popular culture. It doesn't have to do with whiteness, drawing an Asian Kenyan warrior, or an Asian Apache would be exactly the same thing.
By drawing an Asian Viking, you are passing a message. Or you may be expressing an art style, as you say. I accept the idea that Gemini style is multi-cultural, realism and conventions be damned, but if we attribute this kind of intent to an AI, we could also say that the liberties it takes with intellectual property and plagiarism is also intentional, because that how we would judge a human artist doing that.
The standard for a neutral human artist would be to draw a Viking as a blond white guy, with or without the horned helm depending if historical realism matters more than popular culture, and an Italian Plumber as not Mario, because a human understands that if want one wanted Mario, he would have said "Mario" and not "an Italian Plumber". Current AIs on the other hand just draw images similar to how they are tagged, with some out-of-context race mixing because reinforcement learning has taught it that it has to make people less white, but unlike people it isn't able to understand when it is relevant (ex: a university professor), and when it is not (ex: a Viking warrior).