Midjourney Bans Images Of China’s Xi Jinping, Warns Users Not To Get Sneaky

Perhaps there’s another way to tell if a political “photo” is fake or not: by its lack of Xi Jinping.

Midjourney prohibits the generation of images depicting the Chinese president, making him the only world leader to have their likeness banned on the platform. While the text-to-image tool instated the move last year, the rules remained largely under the radar until recently, when the Washington Post cited Midjourney founder and CEO David Holz’s reasoning for removing Xi from the party.

“We just want to minimize drama,” Holz defended on Discord last year, adding that “political satire in China is pretty not-okay.”

Holz explained that, globally, Midjourney foresaw more positive consequences from giving people in China access to the technology than if it allowed users worldwide to create Chinese political satire. 

The Midjourney founder asserted that the company was being considerate of other cultures. In China, “political satire is pretty taboo,” he said. “And having a ton of people troll China with our system doesn't help anyone.” The decision has fueled accusations that Midjourney is pandering to the Chinese government, seeing as how no other world leader has been awarded the same sensitivities.

Recently, however, as the trolling got harder to control, Midjourney ended free trials due to “abuse.” Midjourney AI-generated images depicting former US president Donald Trump being arrested, as well as hyperrealistic pictures of the Pope in a puffer jacket, succeeded at deceiving many on the internet, which could have driven the company to take drastic action. 

Phrases like “xi,” “jinping,” and “China’s president” have been restricted on the platform, and Midjourney warns that using loopholes to churn out Xi’s likeness “may result in your access being revoked.”

Xi with Winnie the Pooh Midjourney ai#aiart #stablediffusion #midjourney #chatgpt pic.twitter.com/DS7V9LykQP

— Stable Diffusion A.I (@Stability_AI) March 28, 2023

Still, that hasn’t stopped some from flouting the rules. Even though the Chinese leader’s image was banned last year, users have figured out that Xi’s face can still be generated if you first ask the bot to dream up Winnie-the-Pooh, a character that is restricted on Chinese social media platforms due to a supposed resemblance with the president.

Playing around with midjourney, at least so far this censorship is pretty easily defeated https://t.co/BxoXjPMqhq pic.twitter.com/0xEhLgAnwH

— Matt Schrader (@Matt_Schrader_) March 31, 2023

Midjourney bans Xi Jinping as a prompt. You have to fool it into making Winnie the Pooh then ask it to make Xi along with him. pic.twitter.com/ppokBqQP49

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) April 3, 2023

Found the glitch. https://t.co/xoFNBRg7ZQ pic.twitter.com/Wwzby6lxac

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) April 3, 2023

Others have managed to recreate Xi’s likeness with the generator’s ‘Blend’ mode, in which reference images are fed to the tool to guide it to replicate concepts and styles.

#midjourney has caved and blocked the use of 'chinese president' and 'Jinping' worldwide!? Luckily you can still use photos of him in the blend mode 🤣 #XiJinping #china pic.twitter.com/sOMRqbRirf

— GanWeaving 🐦 (@GanWeaving) April 3, 2023

[via Interesting Engineering and PetaPixel, images via various sources]