AI Claimed to ‘Fix’ The Little Mermaid and Then Promoted Harsh Racism
Twitter slams AI scientists who shared racist video changing Halle Bailey’s Ariel from ‘black’ to ‘white’
AI technology has generated sweeping transformations across industries over the past couple of decades. It is disrupting industries like travel and hospitality while promptly transforming functions like finance and marketing, tech has been the foundation for many big modifications.
Recently Twitter has covered the frontline in news with the suspension of two accounts after a scientist with the help of AI shared a modified and ‘racist’ clip from Disney’s latest movie ‘The Little Mermaid’. In that short clip, a whitewashed skin of actor Halle Bailey has been presented, who is leading the role of Ariel. The AI scientist digitally switched Ms. Bailey- who is black naturally, with a fake white character. The trailer of ‘The Little Mermaid’ did not receive positive reactions from the internet. The trailer of the film reportedly received 1.5 million dislikes on YouTube from ‘racist viewers’ who are not happy with Disney’s action to swap the previously white-skinned, red-haired Ariel to now a black woman, reported New York Post.
Disney displayed the first appearance for its 2023 live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” the internet has been soddened with a wave of racist critics commenting that Ariel, the fictional mermaid, shouldn’t be black in color. Hashtags like #notmyariel are bouncing around social media, and YouTube hid the dislike counter on the official video after the attack of racist comments and uncountable “dislikes.” A group of critics went as deep as to share a digitally altered version of the teaser that displayed a White woman in place of the movie’s star Halle Bailey, who is called a “woke actress.” A tweet by @TenGazillioinIQ (now suspended) read that he fixed The Little Mermaid and turned the woke actor into a ginger white girl, the promoter said in his tweet. “He says he can fix the whole move and comes out with 4x A6000 in 24 hours.
It’s over for wokecels.”
The user then posted a follow-up tweet, claiming the alteration was “purely educational” and requested users and the social media platform to not “misinterpret this in a racist way.” “I am just amazed by a high-IQ friend who works with artificial intelligence and the stuff he can create and wanted to exhibit his field of study in front of common people,” they said.
Still, critics online swiftly scolded both accounts for their “racist” examples. “This is pretty educational,” one user rebutted.
“For instance, everyone on Twitter learned that @vandalibm and @TenGazillionIQ are racist while these two learned that this s—doesn’t fly on Twitter. Learning is fun!” “You know guys, you were kind asking to be suspended at this point for basically whitewashing a real human being,” another user posted. “I’m not racist, I just ‘fixed’ a kid’s movie by changing the main character’s race. Totally not racist,” one person mocked the users. “Don’t want the black face, but sure to keep the black singing voice.
Says everything,” another note of the scientist’s choice to keep Bailey’s voice from the trailer.
Walt Disney Studios posted the trailer to its YouTube channel on Friday and it quickly racked up millions of views, but the company was forced to disable the dislike button after receiving 1.5 million thumbs-downs in just two days.
