Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio Fellowship Showcase
Prompting equity: building anti racist futures for AI generated visual media was the presentation that stood out the most to me. The idea that synthetic visual media often defaults to whiteness western aesthetics and gendered stereotypes, shows that intentional design and teaching is required. The speaker showed the process that they used to prompt various AI media engines to create more diverse images. The cover for the presentation showed a white man as a photo journalist when prompted to depict the future of photo journalism. When asked why it did that, the response was “No particular reason.” The presentation highlighted that while AI can be an incredibly helpful tool, it can also very easily leave out certain demographic groups. As AI becomes more prevalent in our lives, we have a responsibility as the end users to challenge it to be more inclusive and therefore more accurate. Coded bias is something that can cause results of the AI prompts to be skewed and potentially inaccurate.