An AI-powered lottery website designed to let users envision themselves as winners of the big prize allegedly gave one user more than she bargained for when, instead of giving her a fun AI-generated image of herself, it spit out porn.
Last week, a 50-year-old mom named Megan from Tumwater, a city in Northern Washington state, decided to visit the Washington Lottery’s new AI-powered website called “Test Drive a Win,” according to a report by conservative radio station KTTH. As explained by the outlet, the “Test Drive a Win” website lets users throw a dart on a board featuring several dream vacations that they could theoretically buy if they won the lottery. It then created an AI-generated picture of them on the trip, a “test drive,” using a photo they uploaded themselves.
The virtual dart that Megan, whose last name was not revealed, threw purportedly landed on a vacation where the main attraction was swimming with sharks. The mom proceeded to take a photo of herself and uploaded it to the site to get her dream vacation photo.
The purported photo, which was provided to KTTH, doesn’t exactly match the prompt. First of all, Megan is sitting on a bed and appears to be surrounded by giant goldfish. There was also another, more disturbing aspect to the photo: The mom was reportedly completely nude.
While she had a bikini bottom on, she did not have a top. In addition, the AI-generated image had the Washington Lottery’s logo on the bottom corner.
EXCLUSIVE: Washington’s Lottery forced to pull down its site after creating AI porn of lotto user. https://t.co/7vhmsAvEtn
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) April 3, 2024
When reached for comment by Gizmodo on Thursday, the Washington Lottery stated that it had worked closely with the developers of the AI-powered website to establish “strict parameters” regarding image creation. The entity stated that it had received a report of a single image generated by the website that did not adhere to the guidelines it set out, but did not confirm whether the report they received was about Megan’s image.
“We were made aware that a single user of the AI platform was purportedly provided an image that did not adhere to those guidelines. This campaign was launched more than a month ago and has had thousands of images created that all fall within the prescribed guidelines,” a spokesperson for the Washington Lottery said in an emailed statement. “Regardless, one purported user is too many and as a result, we have shut down the site.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the game on Washington Lottery’s Test Drive a Win website could not be accessed.
“We apologize. The Test Drive a Win app is currently unavailable,” a message on the website read.
According to KTTH, Megan was worried that the AI-generated pornographic image of her could be made public. It’s a widespread concern for women with the rise of AI technology, which is making it easier than ever to create and share fake pornographic images and videos of people. Most recently, AI has been used to create pornographic images of Taylor Swift and other prominent women.