{"id":512731,"date":"2026-03-04T01:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T01:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512731\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T01:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T01:18:14","slug":"edmonton-cree-musician-calls-out-stereotypical-ai-image-of-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512731\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton Cree musician calls out stereotypical AI image of her"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a shocking moment for Cree artist Donita Large.<\/p>\n

Last month the Edmonton singer-songwriter found a photo used in an online publication about her new album that was not her; it was AI-generated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole body just kind of responded with \u2018what am I supposed to do with this,\u201d Large told CityNews. \u201cThis is not me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey published an article without using my photo \u2013 and my photo is readily available \u2013 and create an image of me. I kind of felt really helpless for a minute, and of course the shock, then the distress turned into \u2018I can\u2019t believe this is happening.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The image shows what appears to be an Indigenous woman with long black hair and darker skin tone than the artist\u2019s own. Large says the image was not labelled as one generated by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

CityNews has reviewed the image but has decided not to share it to respect the Large\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that it\u2019s thrown into a news article changes it to be not only a stereotype that\u2019s created by AI, you then make it a fact. It could have caused me a lot of damage had it continued.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Edmonton Cree singer-songwriter Donita Large. (Courtesy: Donita Large Music)<\/p>\n

Large says the image was stereotypical, including a transparent female figure in the background wearing a beaded headpiece and other pan-Indigenous cultural accessories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s so stereotypical of what we\u2019re supposed to look like or that Indigenous people are only of history when we\u2019re modern people who live in every place,\u201d the musician said.<\/p>\n

CityNews reached out to the publisher, Wire Service Canada, to ask about its AI policy, but did not immediately hear back.<\/p>\n

Large says when she alerted them, the article was simply taken down and there was no apology.<\/p>\n

Katrina Ingram, an expert in AI ethics, says images generated using artificial intelligence should be labelled as such.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are lots of ethical choices that we can make, including having policies for acceptable use,\u201d said Ingram, the founder and CEO of Ethically Aligned AI. \u201cAnd I do suggest to everyone that they have some kind of a guideline of acceptable use for AI so that people can be clear on how they\u2019re supposed to use it, how they\u2019re not supposed to use it within a particular organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The cover of Donita Large\u2019s new album \u201cThe Ancestors.\u201d (Courtesy: Donita Large Music)<\/p>\n

Large says she wanted to share her story to raise awareness about the impact of misinformation and media misrepresentation through AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy album is called \u2018The Ancestors\u2019 and that alone, to erase me in that story, is highly problematic,\u201d the Cree singer-songwriter said. \u201cTo have my image be changed and erased, to me, is also a part of that longer story around that. Indigenous erasure is part of our history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a shocking moment for Cree artist Donita Large. Last month the Edmonton singer-songwriter found a photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-512731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}