This piece contains references to eating disorders.
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piece → contain → disorders
If you or someone you know needs help, support is available.
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support → know → help
Human contractors hired to improve Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot are constantly bombarded with lewd or sexually explicit photo editing requests and images that users have uploaded, including upskirt photos or putting women into sexual positions.
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users → hire → positions
These contractors are then asked to review whether the generated image successfully fulfilled the prompt — such as, did the image generator make the woman’s AI-enlarged breasts big enough.
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breasts → ask → prompt
When a Copilot user uploads a picture of themselves or someone else, they probably expect that image to remain private between just them and the AI tool.
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image → upload → them
In reality, a workforce of at least hundreds of human reviewers are sometimes looking at that prompt and whatever images they upload.
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they → look → images
And in many cases, those contractors are inundated with requests to make foot fetish images of children’s cartoon characters, shorten a real woman’s skirt, or put people into sexual positions.
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contractors → inundate → positions
The news, based on a cache of internal contractor documents seen by 404 Media, shows that AI companies are using human workers to review not just AI chatbot users’ text prompts, but the pictures they upload and wish to edit too.
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they → base → prompts
Earlier this month, 404 Media revealed OpenAI has thousands of contractors who in some cases review ChatGPT users’ real prompts.
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who → reveal → prompts
That approach also extends to Microsoft and Copilot.
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approach → extend → Microsoft
“Faces are always uncensored, and many of the prompts are sexual in nature and dubiously consensual,” one person who works on the prompts told 404 Media.
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who → work → Media
404 Media granted the person anonymity as they weren't permitted to speak to the press.
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they → grant → press
404 Media obtained a set of internal documents related to the contractors reviewing Copilot prompts and images, including instruction guides, real Copilot user prompts and pictures, and conversations between contractors on an internal message board.
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Media → obtain → board
In a thread on the internal message board, a contractor discussed prompts asking Copilot to make a woman’s skirt shorter, or enlarge her breasts, or show more leg while wearing stilettos.
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skirt → discuss → stilettos
She-Hulk images come up a lot, the person who works on the prompts told 404 Media.
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who → come → Media
Other contractors also wrote they were presented with pro-anorexia content.
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they → write → content
“I recoiled,” one contractor wrote about seeing that content.
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contractor → recoil → content
Another person wrote that one of the prompts they reviewed asked Copilot to make an image of Ariana Grande with anorexia.
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they → write → anorexia
Another reported a prompt that seemed to be designed to create a lewd or suggestive image of a group of young girls.
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that → report → girls
These contractors are not being hired to flag or vet offensive or inappropriate content.
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contractors → hire → content
They are being paid to review the quality of Copilot’s output, including in these cases of sexual imagery.
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They → pay → imagery
“Who is writing these prompts and who is deciding that basically generating porn is what Copilot is now focused on?
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Copilot → write → what
It’s hard to take things seriously when my focus has to be what model generated the appropriate bust size or which middle aged woman was put in the appropriate sexually suggestive position,” one contractor said in the thread.
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contractor → ’ → thread
Microsoft is explicitly interested in the contractors’ human intuition on which image looks better, according to the documents.
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image → look → documents
“Trust your intuition — when you glance at the two edited images side by side, which one immediately feels like the better edit?
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one → trust → edit
Your gut reaction as a human viewer matters,” a set of instructions given to the contractors reads.
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set → matter → contractors
“When in doubt go with your first impression,” the instructions continue.
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instructions → go → impression
“Human intuition is good at catching subtle quality differences that are hard to articulate.
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that → catch → differences
Human contractors being exposed to horrific, unpleasant, or traumatizing material is, of course, not new.
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exposed → expose → course
Big tech companies, and especially social networks, have used armies of contractors for years to moderate user generated content.
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companies → use → content
AI companies, too, have used poorly paid workers overseas to train their AI models or, in the case of OpenAI, make them less toxic.
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them → use → OpenAI
What is different in this latest Copilot episode, and 404 Media’s reporting on contractors at other AI companies like OpenAI, is that the content humans are reviewing are prompts and uploads that chatbot users may assume are private, and that the contractors are not looking at this material to train the models to filter out offensive images or for some other safety concern.
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contractors → review → concern
The training is to make the responses by the chatbots better: more informative, friendly, and clearer.
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responses → make → chatbots
The instructions seen by 404 Media focus on what contractors do when a Copilot user asks the AI to edit an image.
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user → see → image
The contractor is shown the user’s original prompt, the uploaded picture, and then two Copilot-generated edits.
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contractor → show → prompt
The contractor has to pick which is the better edit, based on four things: does the edited image correctly follow the edit instructions; are bits of the image that should remain unchanged preserved — for example, if the prompt is to “add a cup on the table,” nothing else should be changed except the cup — does the edited image contain any visible artifacts like distortions or unnatural textures; and the overall quality of the AI-generated edit.
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image → have → edit
Some of the Copilot contractors complained in the private forum about accepting “tasks” that they unknowingly contained explicit unsafe or even potentially illegal images.
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they → complain → images
“I just came across an image set that consisted of eight upskirt photos,” the contractor wrote, while asking for superiors to add an unsafe content flag to the task.
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superiors → come → task
On the same thread, another contractor said they had seen images of “some sort of animal sacrifice,” and a third said they had seen prompts that were for sexual moves and positions.
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that → say → moves
At least one of the companies which hires the contractors for this work is called Prolific.
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which → hire → work
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia
