AI Styled by Stereotype

It has been 6 months since Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) was released. Yes, that’s right — it feels like a long time ago but it was Pi Day (March 14th) of this year. Generative AI systems, tools and platforms have since bombarded our digital marketplace. The sea of softwares and people using, adopting and adapting generative AI products had many fooled (at first) that generative AI products would replace people, processes and practices. Instead, the uptick in generative AI product use lead to the uncovering of generative AI’s systemic and structural limitations.

The fears of being replaced quickly turned to spotlighting generative AI’s lack of contextual awareness. One after another, antidotal instances sharing how generative AI reinforced one or more -isms, e.g., racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, etc., hit the mainstream news reel in succession over the past 3+ months. One of these unfortunate showcases of harmful AI came in the way of AI-generated professional headshots. As the Wall Street Journal’s article points out, a professional headshot could cost nearly $1000 all in (photographer, studio time, hair, makeup and clothings), but for less than $50, a generative AI platform could produced a professional headshot using a small sample of photos.

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