In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I’d found a NSFW AI image generator and was playing around with it. Not every image that it returns is NSFW, but it knows that the reason people are using it is to get NSFW images. Sometimes when I ask it for someone with clothes on, if we’re seeing them from the front, the generator will put in a bare nipple, as if to say “See? See? NSFW!”

But what makes an image NSFW? Is it female nipples, butt-crack, and genitalia? I mean, I wouldn’t want this image to show up on my screen at work:

Technically there’s nothing NSFW about this image — all genitalia and nipples are covered. And while the women are in a position that you might see during sex, no sex is happening. Still, it’s really not safe for work.

I tried to make the generator come up with an image reference and some of the shit it produced was fucking ridiculous. One picture had two guys, a total of five legs, and both guys were shirtless so their nipples were showing anyway. I did finally get one that shows what I’m talking about:

Imagine her without the nipples showing. Does that make this image NSFW still? I mean, probably, because you can see the outline of her genitalia through her panties, but imagine if you couldn’t see that, if they were just standard bikini-cut panties that didn’t show her lips. But because we can see her nipples, the generator thinks the image is NSFW even though my prompt did not include any NSFW requests.

Compare that to the image that Gemini created, using the same prompt:

You can barely see the shadow of her left nipple, and only if you look carefully. Is this image NSFW, though? Probably not. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily want it to show up on my work computer while I was in the office, but at least there’s no nudity.

To play with the prompt a little more, I asked the NSFW generator to generate an image of a woman wearing a bikini at the beach. I was hoping to get someone wearing a two-piece, but I got this instead, and it was sexy enough that I wanted to share it with you:

I had to specifically tell it “two-piece bikini” and “no nudity” to get this:

Anyone going to the beach could see a woman in a bikini like that. Any woman going to the beach could choose to wear a bikini like that. Obviously that’s NSFW, but is it not safe for people of all ages to see? What makes it such? I mean, I’m from southeastern Florida originally, and I saw some pretty revealing bathing suits on the beach in my younger days.* None of the adults with me made a fuss because wearing a bathing suit is normal at the beach. But, interestingly, a woman could be wearing lingerie that covers more that the above bikini and still be considered NSFW. What makes bathing suits different from lingerie? (I know the answer; it’s situational appropriateness.)

“Not Safe For Work” is, in the end, subjective. There are a few things that make an image NSFW for sure, but what makes an image NSFW in one situation may not make it so in another situation. And sometimes even nudity is safe for work; in 2007 or 2008 a rather famous actress had had nudes leaked, and it was a big enough story that the website where I worked wanted to do a story on it. Normally I would never have searched for nudity on my work computer, but because it was news the standard was different. I found the image, cropped it to just show her face, wrote the story, and posted it. Our readers wouldn’t have wanted to see anything NSFW, and honestly I felt kind of gross searching for the leaked photo, but I was doing my job so in that instance the photo was safe for work. Like I said, subjective.

I’m not the final word on what is or is not NSFW. It’s just something to think about.

* I’m reminded of a day I spent at my babysitter’s house with my sister and my babysitter’s friend. I was probably ten. There was a pool. The friend, who was college-aged, as was my babysitter, was wearing a bikini bottom and what were basically pasties covering her nipples — they were largish, about the size of your average coffee mug, but young me had never seen a woman dressed like that. My babysitter didn’t make a fuss, and the friend clearly was okay with her boobs being free to bounce (and bounce they did). Clearly it’s a core memory. Was it NSFW? Probably. Was she showing nipples, butt-crack, or genitalia? No, she was not.