All speech is political

Just like all images are propaganda, urging the perpetuation of certain forms and norms amongst its recipients, so too I think all speech is political, insofar as it deals with what is and what should be, or what is not, and what should not be. What’s the right way to live together, what’s the wrong way? That is political speech. It’s not an easy thing to draw a bright line around and exclude – and why would you want to anyway?

Bloomberg (archived) recently quoted the CEO of Midjourney’s appearance in an “office hours” where they quoted him as saying:

“I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform,” Midjourney’s Chief Executive Officer David Holz said last week during an “office hours” session on the chat platform Discord. Holz said the company is “close to hammering” — a term for banning — images such as pictures of Biden and Trump “for the next 12 months.”

He later added:

…Holz said if there is a ban, it likely wouldn’t be announced publicly. “We’ll probably just hammer it and not say anything,” he said.

Because, remember, they are “not a democracy,” and they have a history of ban first, ask (and respond to) questions never. Especially if you’re someone who asks questions and criticizes their product. Then you shall be anathema. Because they “don’t care too much” about political speech. In other words, all speech, the kinds you have rights which protect.

This is why I don’t trust Midjourney or anybody to clearly and cleanly decide (especially when they have a sloppy track record of doing so) what is and what isn’t politically relevant or protected speech. This is, remember yet another black box closed AI system with no oversight and no public governance mechanisms, let alone an appeals process. How’s that for politics? Gross.

Bloomberg does quote Hany Farid though who always has I think measured and appropriate responses to the crazy situations we’re finding ourselves in these days.

“Let’s not pretend that banning images of Biden and Trump in Midjourney is going to solve the much, much larger problem we have of political disinformation,” he said. People will always find their way around safeguards put in place by platforms offering AI-generated content, Farid said.

Especially when we have all these systems whose literal function (among many, sure, but one of the prominent ones for sure) is to make false information appear real. The purpose of a system is what it does. We can’t measure them based on wishes and dreams, but on what they meaningfully and repeatedly create today. These are machines that make disinformation, that make nudes. They do a lot of other stuff, but they do that too, and they won’t stop doing that no matter how much we beg people to abide by the “honor system” and not do the things the system is obviously clearly designed and functionally able to do.

That’s why I say again, all speech is political. Everything speaks to the moment. Everything seeks to shape and steer. Even these attempts at blocking political speech, however well-intentioned in terms of avoiding negative PR they may be. You built an election-destroying machine. Now own up to it, honey.