Elizabeth Lazarki, a product designer who has previously worked with Google, Facebook and YouTube, has accused the organisers of an AI conference of editing her picture to add a bra. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the US-based techie shared a long post narrating the incident. She said that she is set to speak at a conference later this year and the organisers put up an advertisement for the same. She claimed that when she saw the ad featuring her photo, she spotted something different. In the poster picture, not only the pockets of her shirt were removed, but her blouse was unbuttoned and a bra was added, Ms Lazarki alleged.
“I just saw an ad for the conference with my photo and was like, wait, that doesn’t look right. Is my bra showing in my profile pic and I’ve never noticed…? That’s weird. I open my original photo. No bra showing. I put the two photos side by side and I’m like WTF,” she said in an X post.
I’m talking at a conference later this year (on UX+AI).
I just saw an ad for the conference with my photo and was like, wait, that doesn’t look right.
Is my bra showing in my profile pic and I’ve never noticed…? That’s weird.
I open my original photo.
No bra showing.
I put… pic.twitter.com/CpoIgiXtUI
— Elizabeth Laraki (@elizlaraki) October 15, 2024
The techie said that it appeared that the bra was edited onto the photo. “Someone edited my photo to unbutton my blouse and reveal a made-up hint of a bra or something else underneath,” she wrote.
Upon discovering the alterations, Ms Lazarki reached out to the conference host, whom she described as a “respectable guy with five kids at home”. “He is super apologetic and immediately looks into the issue,” she said.
The host explained that the woman running their social media used AI to elongate the photo to make it fit in the space. “AI invented the bottom part of the image (in which it believed that women’s shirts should be unbuttoned further, with some tension around the buttons, and revealing a little hint of something underneath),” she concluded.
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Ms Lazarki shared the post on Tuesday. Since then, it has accumulated more than 2 million views.
Reacting to the post, One user wrote, “Fascinating story. I’ve fed Midjourney identical prompts only swapping out “men” and “women” and the results are always drastically different, sexualizing the images of women nearly always. Interesting mirror to our culture.”
“Thats insane. I noticed some other changes like your necklace pendant and the location of the other buttons but the additional under garment is just crazy!” commented another.
“The conference is about AI and UX? Bet you’ll have one heck of a talk with this first hand experience with the ways AI can mess up,” wrote a third user.
“Wow! What a clear example of AI gone wrong. What a catch! They must feel terrible despite it being a simple mistake,” added another.
“Crazy! AI definitely seems to have a bias towards sexualized imagery for portraits. Very interesting example of how this can cause problems,” expressed one user.