Associated Incidents
Elizabeth Laraki, a former employee at Google who worked on Google Maps, was distraught upon first glance at an ad for the AI conference (Upscale Conf), where she is a panelist. Taking to X/Twitter and LinkedIn, the techpreneur and design maverick narrated her horrific ordeal of her picture showing a part of bra?! “Is my bra showing in my profile pic and I've never noticed...? That's weird.” The techie opened her original photo and saw “no bra showing.” She then put both the conference ad pic and her original photo side-by-side and her jaw dropped. Laraki writes,
Someone edited my photo to unbutton my blouse and reveal a made-up hint of a bra or something else underneath!”
Elizabeth Laraki remarked that the organizer, when informed, “heavily apologized.” The equally shocked and flummoxed organizers then found out the culprit behind the debacle. Her original photo that she sent to the organizers was vertical; however for the speaker photos for the event, the designer had to crop it in square to fit on the website. The person handling social media did not have the original one and lifted the cropped square portrait for the ad. The designer then used an AI expander to make the photo look taller and compatible for the design. In essence, “AI invented the bottom part of the image,” Laraki described. She expressed her shock on how AI “b_elieved that women's shirts should be unbuttoned further, with some tension around the buttons, revealing a little hint of something underneath.”_
pic.twitter.com/CpoIgiXtUI— Elizabeth Laraki (@elizlaraki) October 15, 2024
Thanks for the support and helpful detective work.
pic.twitter.com/nkUTHgtKzO— Elizabeth Laraki (@elizlaraki) October 15, 2024
Luckily, I know the hosts for @upscaleconf. They are great people. When I called this out, they found the issue, apologized + fixed it quickly. They are as weirded out + fascinated by this as all of you.
And yes, for sure, this will make it into my talk about AI + UX.— Elizabeth Laraki (@elizlaraki) October 15, 2024
Elizabeth Laraki started her career as a web designer in 2000 for a lesser known company. In 2001, she became the webmaster for the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago. In 2003, she joined Carnegie Mellon University as a graphic design instructor for both undergrad and graduate students. In 2005, the enterprising design ninja joined Google as UX designer for Google Search and later became the UX Design Lead for Google Maps in 2007, leading teams across US, India, Australia, China, and Switzerland until 2009. After a three year stint at Google, Laraki joined YouTube and was a Design Manager in the firm until 2011. From 2012 till 2018, she was the Director of Product Design at Mark Zuckerberg-led company Facebook. She had a year-long brief stint at Uber Freight in 2020. Currently, Laraki is a design partner with Electric Capital. Elizabeth Laraki did her BFA in graphic design (1996-2001) from the University of Michigan and later earned a Masters in Design, Interaction Design (2003-2005) from Carnegie Mellon University. Despite such an illustrious career and academic background, the AI conference, albeit not deliberately yet, chose to post an AI-altered image of the lady for the promo of the event. Even the AI has misogyny and perv male-gaze heavily ingrained in its algo. Meanwhile, responding to a few tweets on her post, Laraki took a jibe,
clearly pockets ≠ sexy!”
Yes, clearly pockets ≠ sexy. 😂— Elizabeth Laraki (@elizlaraki) October 15, 2024
Yes, I'll make sure to talk about it!