The Kremlin has summoned the creators of a Russian AI chatbot after their tech created naked images of Vladimir Putin and kept getting the country’s flag design wrong.
The developers of the chatbot Kandinsky have angered the Kremlin after it emerged that if users request an image of a ‘naked Putin’, the AI program generates nude images of the Russian President.
One image created by the AI chatbot shows a naked Putin standing up and holding a wooden stick while another shows the Russian despot in the nude while looking terrified inside what appears to be a prison cell.
The AI chatbot also kept producing images of the Russian flag with the wrong colours when users asked it to create an image of the white, blue and red national flag.
For instance, when Russian politician Sergei Mironov asked the chatbot to create an image of ‘beautiful Russia‘, it generated an image of a headless man standing in front of the Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow and a Russian flag in the wrong colours.
And after entering ‘Donbass in Russia’, the chatbot created an image of a Russian soldier in front of destroyed houses with a red, yellow and blue flag overlayed.
But Mironov, leader in parliament of the Kremlin-loyal A Just Russia party, found that the chatbot was able to display the correct colours of the Ukrainian flag correctly when asked to depict ‘Ukraine’.
The Kremlin has been infuriated by the AI chatbot’s ability to consistently create naked images of Putin and its failure to get the Russian flag design right.
The developers of the chatbot Kandinsky have angered the Kremlin after it emerged that if users request an image of a ‘naked Putin’, the AI program generates nude images of the Russian President
One image created by the AI chatbot shows a naked Putin standing up and holding a wooden stick while another shows the Russian despot in the nude while looking terrified inside what appears to be a prison cell
And after entering ‘Donbass in Russia’, the chatbot created an image of a Russian soldier in front of destroyed houses with a red, yellow and blue flag overlayed
The developers of the Kandinsky chatbot, from the Russian banking firm Sberbank, as well as the head of Russian search engine Yandex have since been summoned to the Russian prosecutor’s office for creating such a ‘negative image of Russia’.
The AI developers were told they must tighten their security settings after their chatbot kept creating nude images of Putin when users searched ‘naked Putin’.
But even after the developers made some changes, users can still ask the chatbot to create naked pictures of Putin if they specify their request.
German Gref, the head of the chatbot developer Sberbank, told the Sun: ‘Both us and Yandex were immediately brought to the prosecutor’s office. We have a model for generating the Russian flag – well, it’s generative, it’s trying to improve it. It also drew domes from St. Basil’s Cathedral on the flag.
‘The deputies considered this to be a mockery of our national flag.
‘We immediately stopped certain things – it no longer generates state symbols, it generates a predetermined picture.’
Gref said the problem has been that the AI chatbot model it has been using lost 12 per cent of its creativity and accuracy, meaning that the colours of the Russian flag generated by Kandinsky have been wrong.
He said: ‘We haven’t been able to display the model for the last six months because we were tightening up the security settings.
‘At the same time, the publicly available model lost 12% in creativity and accuracy.
‘We will have to go through this period. We need the help of the state in terms of leniency and understanding that we are like children here for now – we shouldn’t be judged too much.’
When Russian politician Sergei Mironov asked the chatbot to create an image of ‘beautiful Russia ‘, it generated an image of a headless man standing in front of the Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow and a Russian flag in the wrong colours
The Kremlin has summoned the creators of a Russian AI chatbot after their tech created naked images of Vladimir Putin (pictured on Wednesday) and kept getting the country’s flag design wrong
But Mironov said younger generations of Russian children will not know what the Russian flag will look like because of the chatbot’s mistakes.
He said: ‘They will not know what the national flag of Russia looks like, and will believe that Russia is a scientifically backward country.’
Mironov said it appeared the chatbot had been based on designs by ‘unfriendly states waging an informational and mental war’ against Russia.
There are now rumours that Gref will be charged by the Russian government for discrediting the Russian army after it emerged that when users ask the chatbot to create an image of a ‘Z-patriot’, it shows a zombie-like creature.
But this is yet to be seen and Gref said Sberbank approaches its development of AI with ‘no fears’.
He said: ‘The first and most important thing is to try not to regulate this area, and this is the most that the state can do…
‘It seems to me that so far in Russia the government understands this very well, and the Central Bank approaches this soberly and without any fears.’
Whether or not the Gref is charged, it is embarrassing for Sberbank at a time when Russia is calling on both citizens and businesses to rally in support of the war in Ukraine.