Remove racist filter on artists.csv or explain

[Conobi]

Recent events on the GitHub account ban of AUTOMATIC1111 brought to light the fact that weirdly, a lot of black artists (or artists that promotes art that shows black people) have been categorized as n in the artists.csv file.

This could have been considered a simple bug/loophole and not seen as evil or racist, but some very questionable minded mods created by AUTOMATIC1111 (+ others questionable things, e.g being part of facists Discord channels) mean that it can only be seen as a way to exclude black artists when using this feature.

Me and other people in the community want explanation on this because this is totally unacceptable to promote exclusion on a project that let everybody to create things.

We want true steps taken in the way of banning racism and exclusion on this project.

Context

See

stable-diffusion-webui/artists.csv

Line 207 in f8d0cf6

Howardena Pindell,0.7686921,n

for an example.

There are 15 black artists in the n category ; and also Mati Klarwein which is a french white artist that paints black people.

[N-hill88]

Enough about the n filter, where is the k filter?

[Yasand123]

Well, Jean-Michel Basquiat (number 8) is black and he's not in the category "n". He's in "scribbles". There's probably more.

[vt-idiot]

¿Qué tienes contra el idioma español? ¿Quién es el racista ahora?

[Nicoolodion]

I find it very sad that a person who has made such a good SD webui (I know that he doesn't code it himself) is a racist... Right now I am not that sure if I should still use that webui or change it... Everything points out that he is racist...

[aleksusklim]

vt-idiot

Ну, идиот какой-то, понятно.

([/sarcasm])

[mcmonkey4eva]

@N-hill88 there isn't a k filter, what?

---

@Donokami bit of an overreaction posting this. Note that the artists.csv file does not originate from Auto. I'm not sure where the copy in use came from, but I can say most of the files content can found elsewhere, eg clip_interrogator has the name list (minus weights/categories) https://github.com/pharmapsychotic/clip-interrogator/blob/1080560c48daf421ebf44f4791840e4db947bc01/data/artists.txt
I strongly doubt Auto personally ran through the list and categorized them all himself, he quite likely downloaded the list from elsewhere.
It's certainly a bad look for that to come out, but I really doubt Auto had any intentionally regarding specifics of the listing, he just wanted a list of known artists to pull from and found one somewhere.

It's possible the categories came from running through some form of autoclassification (per implication he made in link below).

---

Regarding the list itself,

The single-letter artists.csv content is:

Howardena Pindell,0.7686921,n
Alain Laboile,0.67634284,c
Julie Blackmon,0.72862685,c
Mati Klarwein,0.7066092,n
Barkley L. Hendricks,0.69986427,n
Carrie Mae Weems,0.6645416,n
Barkley Hendricks,0.6883637,n
Yinka Shonibare,0.68256056,n
Zanele Muholi,0.58554715,n
Kehinde Wiley,0.66218376,n
RETNA (Marquis Lewis),0.47963,n
Wangechi Mutu,0.6394607,n
William-Adolphe Bouguereau,0.618265,c
Bapu,0.6122084,c
Robert Irwin,0.58078,c
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge,0.5805516,c
Kadir Nelson,0.5669006,n
Dr. Seuss,0.5597466,c
Amadou Opa Bathily,0.5536976,n
Juliana Huxtable,0.5364195,n
Henning Jakob Henrik Lund,0.5147134,c
Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy,0.49445248,n
Teophilus Tetteh,0.46064255,n
Bruce Onobrakpeya,0.42588046,n

n and c are the only two unclear short lists. Auto has previously commented that these are probably categorization errors, ref #166 (comment) and was intending to fix them, but never got around to it.

[Conobi]

Well, Jean-Michel Basquiat (number 8) is black and he's not in the category "n". He's in "scribbles". There's probably more.

Yep! It has already been discussed on Reddit.
That's why, without context we could think that this is just a malformed category, and just a bug.
But given the context that AUTOMATIC1111 made a George Floyd mod and a white only mod, it is still questionable.

That's why we want changes and a direction given im the opposit way of exclusion/racism.

[mclsugi]

I like Basquiat
I, in the contrary, wants a 'b' filter so as southeast asian brown I can find other artist like Raden Saleh or Basuki Abdullah.

There's a lot of 'n' artist not included in 'n' if the 'n' is really what you think it is. Why so sensitive anyway?

[ghost]

The category classified by the alphabet n is unacceptable. The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. In English, the alphabets N and n are ethnic slurs against black people, especially African Americans.

[verywiseman2]

"questionable minded mods" What is this? Maoist struggle session?
Code is open source. Fix it yourself and put a pull request.

[N-hill88]

@mcmonkey4eva that's the problem, 109 filters isn't enough.

[67372a]

Allow me to simplify this for people with no common sense, regardless of your political, ethical, or moral leanings, having things like this gives ammo to people who would love nothing more than get SD restricted or banned, OR paint any users or creators as being racists, pedos, etc.

This is so trivial to address there is really no excuse other than laziness, or intent. Fix the classifications, change the names of the categories, or just delete N and C. C is a whole additional can of worms for anyone who bothered checking.

Fair, right, and freedom don't matter on private platforms, in the court of public opinion, or in a court of law.

Throwing red herrings and arguing these points is meaningless.

[a1270]

I find it very sad that a person who has made such a good SD webui (I know that he doesn't code it himself) is a racist... Right now I am not that sure if I should still use that webui or change it... Everything points out that he is racist...

The fact you and the OP associates the letter 'n' with a horrible racial slur says more about you two than the dev. Maybe you should concentrate on being less racist yourself.

Well, Jean-Michel Basquiat (number 8) is black and he's not in the category "n". He's in "scribbles". There's probably more.

Yep! It has already been discussed on Reddit. That's why, without context we could think that this is just a malformed category, and just a bug. But given the context that AUTOMATIC1111 made a George Floyd mod and a white only mod, it is still questionable.

That's why we want changes and a direction given im the opposit way of exclusion/racism.

As a french citizen have you yourself apologized for your role your country has played in the slave trade and racism in general? Will you personally be paying recuperation for what your country has done and continues to do to the people of Africa?

[vt-idiot]

and a white only mod

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1518808526
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1520519582

context matters. and in this case, "context" is a joke. grow thicker skin. address actual racism causing actual problems, instead of grasping at straws, and drawing inference (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) and making wild conclusions from a single bloody letter

[econundrum]

Racism or not aside clearly for these groups to be useful their labels have to be clear so why the single letter labels, what's "c". For all we know "n" might not stand for what we think it does and the artists in that group might have something else in common as well as being "Black".

But as it stands poorly labelled groups and groups that aren't about style are pretty useless objectively as well as objectionable.

[mcmonkey4eva]

Y'all, no need to be hostile about it, in either direction.

Chill out.
Those 1-letter artist entries don't need to be there either way, let's just get that fixed without too much shit-slinging about why they're there.
It's probably not Auto's doing either way, so it doesn't really matter.

[mclsugi]

The category classified by the alphabet n is unacceptable. The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. In English, the alphabets N and n are ethnic slurs against black people, especially African Americans.

I know that already, but the problem will get bigger if every group want a special treatment like the 'N' or ;n;. Thank God I've already alive in simpler non-cancelled era.

[Conobi]

@Donokami bit of an overreaction posting this. Note that the artists.csv file does not originate from Auto. I'm not sure where the copy in use came from, but I can say most of the files content can found elsewhere, eg clip_interrogator has the name list (minus weights/categories) pharmapsychotic/clip-interrogator@1080560/data/artists.txt I strongly doubt Auto personally ran through the list and categorized them all himself, he quite likely downloaded the list from elsewhere. It's certainly a bad look for that to come out, but I really doubt Auto had any intentionally regarding specifics of the listing, he just wanted a list of known artists to pull from and found one somewhere.

@mcmonkey4eva I searched for an already classified file on GitHub, the first one ever found is this one made by AUTOMATIC1111.

[hentailord85ez]

Converting to a discussion as there is a lot of discussion going on.