Why does Gemini block harmless image edits like this? What’s the danger?


I get that AI models need restrictions around generating images of real people — totally fair. But some of Gemini’s limits are honestly just silly.

I tried to take a 2k screenshot and ask it to turn it into an oil-painting style image. That’s all. No deepfake, no political figure, no celebrity face swap… literally a screenshot from a basketball video game. And it gave me the “I can’t depict public figures” warning and refused to do anything.

Like… what’s the danger? It’s a cartoonish in-game render of a player. I’m not asking it to recreate the real person. I’m not even editing a photo of a real human — it’s pixels from a game.

I understand the need for guardrails, but this level of over-blocking makes the model feel frustrating and almost unusable for creative work. It feels like they just blanket-ban anything that might resemble a public figure, even when it’s clearly not harmful.

Anyone else running into stupid restrictions like this?

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