Have you ever thought what happens to your photos circulating on social media? I have and that's the topic of in my second short story in English in which I used speculative fiction to question the interplay between humans and technology, specifically AI.
In a nutshell, I imagined what the data from the digital portrait of a Black schoolgirl would say about how it moves inside our phones, computers, and networks if it were invited to speak on a podcast.
The name of the piece is "The Life of Data Podcast" and it appeared in The Lark Publication, an e-magazine focused on fictional short stories and poetry, in October 2023.
This weekend I realised that I never shared it in my newsletter.
Let's rectify that.
The Life of Data Podcast
Episode #205: The School Award Portrait
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Life of Data Podcast, the place where we get the hottest data stars to spill the beans about their success in under 10 minutes. This is episode #205 and you’re in for a treat!
We’re with the one and only IMG_364245.jpg; otherwise known as Jackie Johnson’s school award portrait. IMG_364245g.jpg became famous about a month ago when it was featured in the news as the most used image to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls. As you all may remember, Jackie’s parents claimed that they never gave consent explicitly and Jackie is now suing their parents for lost revenue.
Let’s get cracking!
The Life of Data Podcast (TLDP): Thanks so much IMG_364245.jpg for joining us today.
IMG_364245g.jpg (IMG): Thanks for inviting me. I’m a fan of the podcast!
TLDP: You’ve been a lot in the news over the last month. Still, we always start our interviews with the same question: How were you born and who’s your creator?
IMG: Let’s start with my creator, Norman Buckley, a photograph for the Monday Star newspaper. I was born when he captured the image of the beautiful 9-year-old Jackie Johnson after winning the spelling bee contest at Burckerney School, classifying her for the National Spelling Bee Competition.
Norman created me with a Canon EOS R5 digital camera on a SanDisk’s 512GB Extreme PRO card — today a beautiful collectible!
I appeared on the online and paper versions of the Monday Star culture section on the 15th of May, five years ago.
TLDP: Wow, that’s a great birth and jump to stardom! Tell us more about the first days of your life as an image.
IMG: Sure. As you can imagine, the school had the signed authorization from Jackie’s parents to publish the photo with her name in the journal. No name, no publishing. You know how these things are… (chuckle)
Once the newspaper was published, Jackie’s mother, Betty, shared a link to the online article on the Johnson family WhatsApp group. Everybody was delighted to see Jackie on the news and complimented the girl on her appearance.
It was aunt Rose that asked if she could have a copy of the image — that’s me — to print and frame. When Jackie’s father, Harvey, acknowledged that they didn’t have a copy, uncle Richard suggested reaching out to the photographer, Norman, for a copy. His reasoning was that, anyway, it was not like the journal had paid for it… sharing a copy shouldn’t be big deal.
So, Harvey called Norman who kindly emailed him a copy himself. And then, my second life started! Harvey uploaded me to the family WhatsApp group and I was a total success! All members gave me hearts and I got plenty of compliments: “Beautiful”, “Pretty”, “We’re so proud of you”… And that was how it all started!
IMG: Uncle Joe, aunt Rose’s husband, created a beautiful post on his Facebook wall where he uploaded me with a lovely message “So proud of our beautiful Jackie Johnson. She won the Burckerney School Spelling Bee Contest. I cannot wait to see her competing at a national level.” He shared the post publicly so tens, hundreds, and then thousands of people viewed me and reshared me. I felt so loved!
TLDP: Only loved?
IMG: Good point. I guess I focus on the positives, I’m that kind of data. Of course, there were those that mocked me, soiled me with unflattering filters, and cut out parts of me — yes, actually mutilated me — to make disgusting collages.
TLDP: That sounds awful! How did you cope?
IMG: By telling myself that the important thing was to propagate and hopefully become viral. I would have preferred to do it with all my pixels intact but it’s not always something one can control.
TLDP: Can you share some of your proudest moments?
IMG: Sure. I’ll share three. First, reaching 1 million likes on Instagram. Cousin Carol’s Insta account totally exploded when she shared me.
Second, every time I got perks for Jackie. For example, when she and her friends were standing in the endless queue to enter the Dynamic Boys Band concert at the National Stadium. One of the girls in the group approached a security guard and said, “She’s the famous Jackie Johnson! She was in the newspaper!” And then, with one hand proceeded to show him on her mobile the webpage of the Monday Star that showcased me and with her other hand pointed at Jackie. After moving his eyes from me to Jackie’s face several times, the security guard made a sign to the group and led them to the VIP entrance. What’s not to like?
And obviously, when I was named the top most wanted photo to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls by e-Synthetic, the biggest generator of images from text inputs.
TLDP: Now that we know more about you, let’s go back to my intro. So far, it looks like a success story. Where did all go wrong to end up in the tribunals and with a family destroyed?
IMG: I said I had managed to cope with the mockery, the collages, and the insults. It was much harder for Jackie. She was only 9 at the time and although she was happy to get some perks — like the speedy access to the concert — she was not prepared for the downsides.
For example, some children at the school would make fun of her hairstyle, her posture, or how she was dressed that day.
Some parents complained to the school that kids were getting too much attention from the press.
Also, attendees of the Spelling Bee Contest that had taken their own photos of the award ceremony started sharing their sloppy images on social media… Some of those were really hideous and had nothing to do with me, who looked polished and professional.
In the middle of that shambles, the school called Jackie’s parents to ask them to keep her away from the school for a while, until things would go back to normal. Both Betty and Harvey pushed back, blaming the school for bringing the photographer in to gain exposure at the expense of a little girl. The school replied that if there was someone to blame, it was them. They have not only given their consent in writing but also shared the photo on social media.
When Jackie learned that the school didn’t want her back, she refused to leave home altogether. She didn’t want any more attention. It was not fun anymore.
Her parents recriminated all the family members. Aunt Rose who had asked for me on WhatsApp because she wanted to frame me; uncle Richard that prompted Harvey to ask for me to the photographer; uncle Joe that shared me on Facebook; cousin Carol that made me viral on Instagram … And everybody else, including those that had created videos and shared them on TikTok and YouTube.
All family members apologized and even deleted their posts but they had been reshared so many times that it was an impossible task to eliminate them all.
And that’s where e-Synthetic comes. As all of us know, e-Synthetic is the largest subscription platform to generate images from text prompts. You can create amazing images by only adding as few as 4 words to the prompt on their webpage.
I’ll explain how this works for the newbies. They use artificial intelligence to generate new images that satisfy the conditions of the text prompt using a mix of images from their database.
And their database is huge! It contains millions of images of all the things you can imagine: Art, people, buildings, cities, nature… Most of the images have been scrapped from the web. For example, any photo on social media is fair game.
So, of course, I also got scrapped by e-Synthetic! And I’ve been used profusely every time that “Black girl” or any of its synonyms has been used in the text prompt.
Unfortunately, Jackie, who’s now a little bit older, feels that the whole situation is detrimental to her.
For example, when she learned that I was among the most used photos to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls, she realized e-Synthetic was doing tons of money from using me — her image — without her receiving a cent.
And money was not the only problem. Understandably, neither did she like that parts of me appeared in images with degrading content, like pornography, created with e-Synthetic.
She cannot sue e-Synthetic — they downloaded me from social media — but she’s suing her parents for failing to protect her image. That’s me.
TLDP: A really tough situation. From the ethical point of view, don’t you think is somehow questionable that Jackie herself was never asked to give consent to publish or share her digital image, that is, you? Or that e-Synthetic didn’t contact her parents to seek their approval? She’s a minor, after all.
IMG: First, let me tell you that I empathize with Jackie. I exist because of her. And I also feel bad for her parents.
On the flip side, Jackie is a minor and their parents shared me on social media because I look like her. Now, they claim that they didn’t know about the drawbacks of the image becoming public… Come on! They should have known better.
There are detailed terms and conditions on social media platforms. Don’t tick the box “I have read the terms and conditions” if you haven’t done it or if you don’t understand them. Jackie’s parents are adults and it’s on them to master her personal data privacy.
I say: Their child, their responsibility.
TLDP: Many thanks for being candid about where you stand on social media platforms’ accountability for the content they host. It’s a very polarizing topic and we’ve had guests on the podcast with opposite views.
I remember episode #176, where web cookie STpqRHSRaiPbh shared a thought experiment comparing our different attitudes toward social media and food. For example, social media companies use their Terms & Conditions to waive their responsibility for the content shared on their platforms. And we appear to be fine with it.
Then, let’s consider food. STpqRHSRaiPbh posits that we wouldn’t accept that if a supermarket is selling rotten meat, they tell their customers that they are only a “meat platform” and cannot control what their suppliers sell to them…
Anyway, it’s a controversial issue and part of a broader conversation. Let’s now return the focus to you.
What false accusation has hurt you the most in this whole affair?
IMG: To be honest, the most painful has been when they say that it’s my responsibility that algorithms classify Jackie as an angry child or categorize her as a boy and not a girl. Let me say it again: It’s not my fault.
It’s well known that it’s not us, digital images, who are in charge of deciding on somebody’s gender or mood. We are going on with our lives and then an annotator — a tech worker that adds descriptions to data — or an algorithm decides that we’re the image of a girl, a man, or a baby boy based on their own biases and assumptions. And we know that current image algorithms are worse at predicting the gender of Black women compared to that of men or White women.
Same with emotions. Annotators and algorithms decide if the subjects in the images are sad, happy, or fearful based on pseudo-science. Again, it’s been demonstrated that they predict that subjects with darker skin are angrier compared with those with lighter skin even if they show the same facial expressions in the photos.
With all this evidence, why do I still have to put up with all that nonsense that those mistakes are my fault? Blame artificial intelligence, machine learning, and annotators, not us!
Ok, my rant is over.
TLDP: Thanks again for sharing these gems of wisdom, IMG_364245.jpg. This is so important for our younger audience. They’re hearing all the time that the problem with bias in artificial intelligence is the lack of diversity in data. You have done a great job at demonstrating to them that they are not the problem and that data is unfairly blamed for algorithms and people’s biases.
Next question. Can you point out the key to your success?
IMG: Definitively the Johnson’s WhatsApp group. All those digital interactions were instrumental to get me the exposure I needed to go global.
TLDP: What would you have liked to know at the beginning?
IMG: When they started sharing me on social media, I was very angry about the whole photoshop thing. I was perfect already! Why did some people have to make a mess of me and lighten my skin pixels? At the time, my self-esteem suffered a lot.
And then, one day, I realized that I’d never be able to end the world’s obsession with lighter skin anyway.
After that breakthrough moment, I was able to savor my success, even at the expense of digital bleaching.
TLDP: There are so many images of White people on the internet. What would you say to recent digital images of Non-White people that feel a lack of opportunity to go viral?
IMG: The opportunity is huge! With brands undergoing a massive DEIwashing…
TLDP: Wait, DEIwashing? Can you explain?
IMG: Thanks for asking. Actually, I coined the term myself.
DEIwashing is when organizations resort to performative diversity, inclusion, and equity tactics. For example, peppering their marketing — websites, brochures, videos — with images of Non-White people to convey a sense of diversity that doesn’t match that of their organization.
As I was saying before, with the pressure on organizations to DEIwash their images, there’s never been a better time to be an image of Non-White people. This is our time!
TLDP: Any final words for our audience?
IMG: Catch me if you can! Social media and e-Synthetic have made me indestructible. (guffaw)
TLDP: Thanks so much IMG_364245.jpg for this thought-provoking conversation. We wish you all the best in your professional career.
If you liked this episode, please consider leaving a review, sharing it with other data, and subscribing to the podcast.
We’ll be back next month with another data rockstar giving us a peek into their life.
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