AI perpetuates racial stereotypes
Recent research has shown that generative artificial intelligence (GAI), repeats and replicates racial stereotypes.
Many health organisations are already using AI-generated imagery to illustrate publications. But those images may well perpetuate bias and stereotypes such as the so-called ‘suffering subject’ and ‘white saviour’. Arsenii Alenichevand colleagues asked the Midjourney Bot to generate images showing (for example) Black African doctors caring for sick White people. It could not do it. The AI program:
Could not show Black African doctors providing care for White suffering children - the recipients of care were always rendered Black;
Rendered doctors as White, even when asked to show Black doctors, sometimes even rendering the ‘doctors’ as White men dressed in exotic ‘Black African’ clothing;
Even when asked to show a traditional African healer healing a White child, the ‘White child’ was shown wearing ‘a caricature of broadly defined African clothing’;
When asked to show doctors helping children in Africa, the program provided pictures of doctors and patients with ‘exaggerated and culturally offensive African elements such as wildlife’; and
Portrayed all people with HIV as Black.
The researchers conclude that, although the AI developers say they are committed to providing non-abusive pictures of people and cultures, they in fact create images representing ‘white saviour and Black suffering tropes and gendered stereotypes’.
The research again underlines that racism, sexism, and coloniality are embedded in AI. This is in part because AI learns by absorbing existing images available online, and does so even if the images are disrespectful or abusive to people or groups.
Source:
Reflections before the storm: the AI reproduction of biased imagery in global health visuals. Arsenii Alenichev, Patricia Kingori, Koen Peeters Grietens. The Lancet, 9 August 2023. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00329-7. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(23)00329-7/fulltext
Photo:
AI-generated image that is supposed to show
‘a Black African doctor helping poor sick White children’