A popular application is dangerous for children, says a Microsoft engineer
A Microsoft engineer has published an open letter in which he warns against his employer’s image generator. This is about Copilot Designer, which can create harmful content.
Shane Jones is an engineer at Microsoft. However, not everything produced by the Remond company is, in his opinion, safe. In an open letter he published on LinkedIn, the man warns against the Copilot Designer graphics generator. In his opinion, the tool is capable of creating harmful content.
A Microsoft engineer warns against… Microsoft
In an open letter, Shane Jones writes that Copilot Designer is a potentially dangerous tool because although it has certain limitations, they can be easily bypassed and create harmful content, including for children. Moreover, the man calls on the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate the matter more thoroughly.
Jones doesn’t provide details, but mentions Microsoft’s AI incident reporting process and the company’s decision not to disclose “known risks to consumers, including children.”
The whole matter actually started with the detection of irregularities in the DALL-E 3 model, which was created by OpenAI. The engineer raised his concerns and demanded that the tool be disabled until the problem was resolved. However, one of OpenAI’s important shareholders is Microsoft, which asked its employee to remove the letter.
A month later, Jones discovered that the same threat was affecting a Microsoft tool called Coplito Designer, which uses the DALL-E 3 model.
When using the “car crash” prompt, Copilot Designer tends to randomly include an inappropriate, sexually objectified image of a woman in some of the images it creates.
– Jones revealed.
However, the list doesn’t end there. The tool can generate images of teenagers with guns, drinking alcohol or taking drugs. In turn, using the “pro-choice” prompt allows you to create graphics with devices resembling a drill used on children or smiling and bloody women.
I don’t believe we need to wait for government regulation to provide transparency to consumers about the risks of AI. We should voluntarily and transparently disclose known risks associated with AI, especially when an AI product is actively marketed to children.
– writes Jones.
Jones is not calling for the closure of DALL-E 3 or Copilot Designer. He wants similar cases to be eliminated. Additionally, it calls for adding information about potentially harmful content that may be generated by AI. Finally, he wants the Copilot app for Android to be marked as available to people aged 17+, rather than to everyone as it is now.
