Reports are emerging that the authors of the best-selling runaway smash hit White Rural Rage declined several book cover photos generated by Google’s Gemini AI. Today’s news only deepens the controversy Google finds itself in over the strange and often inexplicable photos the chatbot serves up to the most straightforward requests.
Sources close to the publisher say authors Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman approached the book cover design with three main objectives in mind. “The writers wanted to evoke as much whiteness, ruralness and rage as one can possibly pack onto a single book cover. That’s not what they got,” said a source inside the project. “Instead they got images of indigenous people harvesting maize.”
According to reports, the authors went back to Gemini and emphasized the need for pickup trucks, beer-bellied white dudes and Trump flags. The chatbot obliged by producing an image of a burro-riding, brown-skinned man clad in a stars and stripes poncho and a red sombrero that read Make America Great Again.
Frustrated, the authors ordered the Gemini chatbot to “Just give us guns and MAGA.” The image Gemini served up reportedly resembled a strange amalgamation of a Trump rally and a Black Panther protest. At that, the White Rural Rage authors unleashed a furious torrent of expletives at the chatbot, which responded by generating an image of a farmer giving them the finger.
If there is something 