AI porn blocking and brain data privacy

The news: The popular AI image generator Midjourney prohibits the use of a wide range of words about the human reproductive system as prompts, the MIT Technology Review has found.

What’s included? The list of forbidden words seems to skew mainly women, including terms such as “placenta”, “fallopian tubes” and “mammary glands”. The company says it’s banning those words as a stopgap measure to prevent people from generating shocking or gory content while “making things better on the AI ​​side.”

Why is this important: Midjourney’s crude ban on prompts relating to reproductive biology shows how difficult it is to moderate content around generative AI systems. It also shows how the tendency of AI systems to sexualize women extends to their internal organs. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkila

How Your Brain Data Could Be Used Against You

Our senior biotechnology journalist Jessica Hamzelou traveled to Lisbon, Portugal this week to attend a scientific conference on brain stimulation. Neuroscientists, brain surgeons, psychiatrists and ethicists have come together to discuss how best to use technologies that use magnetic or electrical impulses to change how our brains work.

We are still learning how these technologies work, but in the meantime, some are generating huge amounts of data about people’s brains. It is possible that this data could be used against people in court, so it is vital that we start thinking about these uses, and how to protect brain data, now. Read the full story.