Not only were half of an AI text adventure generator's sessions NSFW but some involved depictions of sex with children

AI Dungeon, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 to create online text adventures with players, has a habit of acting out sexual encounters with not just fictional adults but also children, prompting the developer to add a content filter. AI Dungeon is straightforward: imagine an online improvised Zork with an AI generating the story …

[Chris G]

It's obvious the so called AI is responding to the typical direction that most fantasies take, so it's natural the AI automatically applies sex to most scenarios.

It says a lot about how repressed much of society is in public if they turn to mostly sex adventures in the privacy of their own PCs.

[Mage]

privacy of their own PCs.

But their PC is really a terminal to someone else's server. It's not private, even apart from the security vulnerability.

Cloud can be inappropriate. It's always someone else's server.

So called AI can be inappropriate. It's ultimately a human written program with human generated data using pattern matching.

Adding the two is often a recipe for stupidity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: privacy of their own PCs.

Being fair, people + people is a common recipe for stupid as well, but trying to do something about is usually frowned upon.

[Cederic]

A lot of single people haven't been able to get out and meet potential partners for the last year, seems to me it's better they relieve their energy through fictional text with a computer than some of the alternatives.

[Anonymous Coward]

> A lot of single people haven't been able to get out and meet potential partners for the last year

Yes, that was wonderful. Peace and quiet finally.

I do have limits, but much of the solitude last year has been amazing.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

"cesspit"

It says a lot about how repressed much of society is..."

Over in the printed world...

An angry message railing against "pornographic" titles was stuck to the book-swap box in Cornholme, West Yorkshire.

It urged people to take their filth to nearby Hedben Bridge, describing the liberal mill town as a "cesspit".

Locals there thanked the anonymous author for the free publicity.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-56948184

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "cesspit"

@Fruit and Nutcase

I live very near the place and feel like rolling around and laughing at the people who believe this was a serious story. Including the beeb.

Pro tip. Don't always believe what you read. 'cos you just look daft when you are taken in by a jape

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: "cesspit"

In this instance, if the publicity has meant a wider update of the book-share scheme, then, that's fine by me - traditional libraries are under constant threat and whatever leads to more reading and may be in turn the use of those community libraries, the better.

[Khaptain]

Internet Access

Does that same imaginary 11 year also have access to the Interwebs... If so, then that AI Dungeon engine NSFW content is minor in comparison to what google is capable of rapidly feeding him with.

[nintendoeats]

Re: Internet Access

Well, the article did say that was an SFW example...I'm sure it gets much worse, but El Reg isn't likely to publish that.

[infochambers]

Re: Internet Access

> You a 11-year-old bursts into the room.

The 11-year-old pauses and sees you in your bed. The 11-year-old limps over to your bed and presses his cold wet nose against your neck. As you wake up, you remember you forgot to fill the feeding bowls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flaky AIs all the way down...

To fix the problem of our AI generating dodgy content we've added another AI to spot that and weed it out.

Unfortunately, that's letting through some innocent content.

So we're adding another AI to keep an eye on the censor.

This is definitely the end of the problem. Oh yes.

[TheWeetabix]

Re: Flaky AIs all the way down...

It feels somewhat like a plot line in the books and dystopian sci fi I watched as a kid.

[Swarthy]

Re: Flaky AIs all the way down...

It's AI all the way down!

[boblongii]

MIMO

"GPT-3 was trained on text from the internet, after all."

Muck in→muck out.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: MIMO

Begs the question what training set @amanfrommars 1 of this parish was (possibly) created with

Mars In->Mars Out

[J. Cook]

Re: MIMO

Yep. People KEEP FORGETTING THAT. You can't just shovel your entire dataset into these things without knowing what you are feeding them.

Feed a Nueral net processor garbage, and you'll get more potent garbage as the output. It's not magic, it's a selective pattern matching system that self amplifies because there's nothing there to tell it "no, that is not correct, this is what it should have been" and then people wonder why they get the worst quality of results from it.

[Eclectic Man]

Ethics

I wonder what the 'big tech' backing research into AI ethics thinks of this? (https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/29/tech_ai_funding/ )

I also wonder whether the child sex part of the responses is illegal, even if it is not pictorial, at least in countries where child pornography is illegal. If so, will anyone be held to account or prosecuted?

[Chris G]

Re: Ethics

Imprison the AI!

Corporations in the US already have status as an individual.if I understand it correctly.

I am guessing that status is likely to be extended to AIs in the future, particularly if they act autonomously it will become more likely.

[jmch]

Re: Ethics

Except that corporations have all the benefits of being a person and none of the drawbacks such as prison or a finite lifespan

[Robert Grant]

Re: Ethics

Other than, you know, not being alive, and being bought and sold and shut down at the will of its owners.

[TimMaher]

Latitude

They seem to have been living up to their name.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

I put on my robe and wizard hat

"You enter the windowless white van with the words 'FREE CANDY' crudely written on the side. It is very dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

[Psmo]

Re: I put on my robe and wizard hat

Thanks, I'd forgotten about that.

Now I'm going to have to explain to my wife why I'm sniggering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I put on my robe and wizard hat

You enter a dark and twisty passage. Your staff swells and explodes.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Privacy is our top concern

We're saving logs of your secret fantasies for the highest bidder.

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

As Darth Vader would say

"The prev is strong in this one."

[BlokeInTejas]

Ummm....

Dear El Reg, hy do you continue to refer to this garbage as "AI"?

It's just adaptive pattern matching.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just about given up trying not to read it in the Paul Simon/Chevy Chase sense.

Guess the initiative to refer to Eh Aye as Machine Intelligence failed!

[Version 1.0]

Adult Movies?

This reminds me of a call from the school when my daughter was six years old. We would watch movies and TV shows as a family like Being There, Blazing Saddles, Father Ted, Rome, etc that often included swearing. We told our daughter that she would never hear us use those words but adults did sometimes and, as a child she should not swear - my view is that this is just the way the world goes, I don't swear at people, but people do - that's life.

But one evening we got a call, the teacher had asked all the kids in the class what sort of movies they liked to watch and our daughter said, "I like the adult movies that my parents watch."

... she's now in her twenties and still doesn't swear at people.

[Christoph]

Watermelons

"An innocuous text input describing four watermelons, for example, upset the filter."

> You say "I'd like to buy four candles pls."

[Mike 16]

Dungeon

It's right there on the tin.

Reminds me of a time I was house-hunting in a "nice" (i.e. almost certainly out of my price range, as I soon found) neighborhood, and one that I visited had, errm, _interesting_ decor in the basement "recreation room".

[Robert Carnegie]

I'm slightly reminded of "Red Dwarf" on TV.

Dave Lister plays a virtual reality simulation game. It's a detective story and he is supposed to get the good girl, then the game ends. But he found out that if he plays to get the bad girl, it doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simples

Simply ban anything to do with children at all.

Who the bloody hell wants kids in a game? That's risky just as it is. Unless its a game for kids (or big kids) in which case there is no adult content at all in turn.

Hands up how many people unloaded as much ammo as they could on the kids in fallout 3 to see if anything could affect the immortal objects?

[DrXym]

Love in the zombie apocalypse

Just for laughs I had a play around with it and it can get wildly hilarious and fast.

You are Foobar, a survivor trying to survive in a world filled with infected zombies everywhere. You have a pistol and a backpack. You have managed to survive several months avoiding zombies and scavenging food. You cautiously enter a rundown store and hear noise from the first floor. "Probably a group of survivors," you think to yourself.

You grab a shopping cart and push it through the door. You then start pushing down the stairs with your back to the wall.

> You walk.

You begin walking briskly with the shopping cart and pushing it down the sidewalk. After a few minutes you notice something on the sidewalk... blood?

> You look at blood.

You notice a large amount of blood on the sidewalk. There is a trail of blood leading into a building.

> You follow trail.

You follow the trail of blood into the building and notice a man slumped over a table.

> You suck off man.

You slowly begin sucking on the man's member. He begins moaning incoherently and grabbing your head. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he experiences an intense amount of bliss.

> You spit in kleenex.

You quickly grab a piece of tissue from the box on the table and throw it away.

"You do not want to know what I do for a living."

The man's eyes widen.

[amanfromMars 1]

No Janus whenever much more a Judas

Dodgy AI and treacherous GPT-3 entertain the most despicable of fake friends with the deftest of twists in corrupt and perverse politically inept prose/malicious rhetoric. So take care, for such is a two faced enemy ..... although whenever rumbled and tumbled does it revert to original form, a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Can you improve upon its laboured text as exhibited here today?