“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. - Marx
It's certainly designed to try to correct for biases, but in doing so sloppily they've managed to make it if anything more racist by falsifying history in ways that e.g. downplays a whole lot of evil by semi-erasing the effects of it from their output.
Put another way: Either don't draw nazis, or draw historically accurate nazis. Don't draw nazis (at least not without very explicit prompting - I'm not a fan of outright bans) that erases their systemic racism.
you may be arguing for an ideal and fair multicultural representation, but it's not what this sistem is representing.
that said, I struggle to see how the targeted cancellation of one specific culture would reconcile as a bona fide attempt at multiculturalism
If I ask to generate an image of a couple, would you argue that the system's choice should represent "some ideal" which would logically mean other instances are not ideal?
If the image is of a white woman and a black man, if I am a lesbian Asian couple, how should I interpret that? If I ask for it to generate an image of image of two white gays kissing and it refuses because it might cause harm or some such nonsense, is it not invalidating who I am as a young white gay teenager? If I'm a black African (vs. say a Chinese African or a white African), I would expect a different depiction of a family than the one American racist ideology would depict because my reality is not that and your idea of what ideal is is arrogant and paternalistic (colonial, racist, if you will).
Maybe the deeper underlying bug in human makeup is that we categorize things very rigidly, probably due to some evolutionary advantage, but it can cause injustice when we work towards a society where we want your character to be judged, not your identity.
Philosophically you can dilute and destroy the meaning of terms, and AI that has no such judgement can't generate realistic images. If you ask for an image of "an American family" you can assault the meaning of "American" and "family" to such an extent that you can produce total nonsense. This is a major problems for humans as well, I don't expect AI to be able to solve this anytime soon.
That would be a reasonable default and one that I align with. My peers might say it perpetuates stereotypes and so here we are as a society, disagreeing.
FWIW, I actually personally don't care what is depicted because I have a brain and can map it to my worldview, so I am not offended when someone represents humans in a particular way. For some cases it might be initially jarring and I need to work a little harder to feel a connection, but once again, I have a brain and am resilient.
Maybe we should teach people resilience while also drive towards a more just society.