Buzzfeed came under fire for publishing a list of AI-generated images that portrayed Barbie in 195 countries in a manner that was seen as inappropriate, inaccurate, and that reinforced racial and ethnic stereotypes.
From Afghanistan To Zimbabwe: Here's What Barbie Would Look Like In Every Country was created using the Midjourney image generator and depicted a number of Asian Barbies with blonde hair, showed Middle-eastern Barbies wearing a traditional headdress for men, gave a South Sudanese doll a gun, and a Lebanese Barbie standing on rubble.
In addition to reinforcing racial and ethnic stereotypes, the fracas also resulted in commentators highlighting existing concerns about bias in generative AI datasets, and in Midjourney specifically.
Buzzfeed deleted the article after the backlash.
Databank
Operator: Buzzfeed
Developer: Midjourney
Country: All
Sector: Consumer goods; Media/entertainment/sports/arts
Purpose: Entertain
Technology: Text-to-image; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Bias/discrimination - race
Transparency: Governance
System
News, commentary, analysis
https://www.insider.com/ai-generated-barbie-every-country-criticism-internet-midjourney-racism-2023-7
https://nextshark.com/buzzfeed-ai-generated-barbies-backlash-controversy
https://www.todayonline.com/world/ai-generated-barbie-asian-2216406
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: October 2023
Last updated: November 2023