Taylor Swift deepfakes be damned, Google is releasing a new AI-powered tool, ImageFX, for image creation. Underpinned by Imagen 2, a GenAI image model developed by Google’s DeepMind team, ImageFX offers a prompt-based UI to create and edit images. That’s no different than tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, Midjourney, Meta’s Imagine with Meta AI and Microsoft Designer. But ImageFX’s unique twist is “expressive chips” — basically a list of keyword suggestions that let users experiment with “adjacent dimensions” of their creations and ideas. “Designed for experimentation and creativity, ImageFX lets you create images with a simple text prompt, then easily modify them with a new take on prompting using expressive chips,” Google writes in a blog post. But what of the potential for abuse — especially in light of recent events? Google claims that it’s taken steps to ensure that ImageFX can’t be used in ways that it wasn’t intended, for example by adding “technical safeguards” to limit “problematic outputs” like violent, offensive and sexually explicit content. ImageFX also has a prompt-level filter for “named people,” presumably public figures — although Google wasn’t especially clear on that point in its press materials. “We invested in the safety of training data from the outset,” Google said. “Consistent with our AI principles, we also conducted extensive adversarial testing and red teaming to identify and mitigate potential harmful and problematic content.” As an additional safety measure, Google’s tagging images produced using ImageFX with SynthID, a digital watermark that’s allegedly robust against image edits and crops. “SynthID watermarks are imperceptible to the human eye but detectable for identification,” Google continues in the blog post. “With added insights in ‘About this image,’ you’ll know if an image may have been generated with Google’s AI tools when you come across it in Google Search or Chrome.” You’ll find ImageFX in AI Test Kitchen, Google’s web app for experimental AI projects.
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