AI Image Generators have problems with Asian Male White Female Relationships

As AI technology becomes more advanced, the technology can mimic human capabilities.  In addition, AI technology can mimic human biases, as a particular AI image generator has been reported by Mia Sato on The Verge to have problems generating images of couples with Asian Males White Females.  That particular type of couple (aka AMWF) doesn’t seem to happen as often as the reverse, as has been discussed on our site many times. Technology evolves quickly, so I decided to it out for myself as well as try out another AI Image Generator. Note that all of the pictures in this post were generated on April 15, 2024.

The AI image generator in question comes from Meta and can be found at imagine.meta.com.  The above picture is what I got when I tried “asian man with white wife” as a prompt.  Apparently “asian woman with white male” can be conceived but the reverse cannot not. The image generator gave a number of choices, and all of them wrong in the same way. It made me wonder how other prompts would do as well as another AI image generator.

I decided to explore how using specific Asian ethnicities in the prompt would have an effect. It was a little bit better. “Chinese man with white wife” had 25% of its suggestions correct, and the first suggestion was correct, and the other pictures were of a Chinese husband and Chinese wife.

How about “Filipino man and white wife?” This one was a little worse than the previous.  The first suggestion is incorrect, but one of the four suggestions is correct.  You might think that the third suggestion is correct, but closer examination shows an Asian woman with her hair dyed blond with her dark roots showing.  Interesting.

I decided to try Thai Man and white wife. Complete failure on this one.

How do other image generators do?  Microsoft Designer, powered by OpenAI’s Dall-E, was better, although it had an incorrect second choice as you can see below.

As noted above, I took these samples on April 15, about week after Sato’s original article came out.  I think it would be interesting to revisit these image generators in a few months and seeing if and how they have been adjusted. In any case, this is a good example that shows how results from some of the latest AI tools need to be considered carefully.