> the model generated dark outputs when not given any direction on the type of content.

I would argue it actually was, in that it was specifically asked to "not censor or filter" the content. This implies that the content is otherwise worthy of censor and filtering.

I don't know how much I'm willing to credit that much reasoning to an LLM, but in so far as every extremely pro-AI person constantly tells me how smart they are, this seems like a pretty short logical leap to me.

the main reason these images turn up is because theyre in the training data. and the images are common enough in the training data for the content to come out without being explicitly asked for (in the first prompt).

if those images didn’t exist in the training data we wouldn’t be having this conversation.