Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a widely popular technology that will have a profound impact on society and individuals. Less than a decade ago, it was thought that creative work would be among the last to be automated - yet today, we see AI encroaching on many creative domains. In this paper, we present the findings of a survey study on people's perceptions of text-to-image generation. We touch on participants' technical understanding of the emerging technology, their fears and concerns, and thoughts about risks and dangers of text-to-image generation to the individual and society. We find that while participants were aware of the risks and dangers associated with the technology, only few participants considered the technology to be a personal risk. The risks for others were more easy to recognize for participants. Artists were particularly seen at risk. Interestingly, participants who had tried the technology rated its future importance lower than those who had not tried it. This result shows that many people are still oblivious of the potential personal risks of generative artificial intelligence and the impending societal changes associated with this technology.

翻译：生成式人工智能（AI）是一项广泛流行的技术，将对个人和社会产生深远影响。不到十年前，人们还认为创意工作将是最后被自动化的领域之一——然而今天，我们看到AI正在侵入众多创意领域。本文报告了一项关于人们对文本到图像生成技术看法的调查研究。我们探讨了参与者对该新兴技术的技术理解、他们的恐惧与担忧，以及关于该技术对个人和社会造成的风险与危险的看法。研究发现，虽然参与者意识到该技术伴随的风险与危险，但仅少数人认为该技术对自身构成个人风险。参与者更容易识别出该技术对他人的风险，艺术家尤其被视为面临风险。有趣的是，尝试过该技术的参与者对其未来重要性的评价低于未尝试者。这一结果表明，许多人仍未意识到生成式人工智能的潜在个人风险以及该技术带来的即将发生的社会变革。