"Draw me a curator" Examining the visual stereotyping of a cultural services profession by generative AI

TL;DR

This study analyzes how generative AI models depict museum curators, revealing significant biases in gender, ethnicity, age, and stereotypes that differ from real-world demographics and professional images.

Contribution

It provides a detailed examination of AI-generated visual stereotypes of curators, highlighting biases and discrepancies with actual demographics and professional representations.

Findings

AI underrepresents women and ethnic minorities in curator images

Curators are often depicted as young, professional, and stereotypically dressed

Generative AI datasets contain biases that influence portrayals of museum professionals

Abstract

Based on 230 visualisations, this paper examines the depiction of museum curators by the popular generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) model, ChatGPT4o. While the AI-generated representations do not reiterate popular stereotypes of curators as nerdy, conservative in dress and stuck in time rummaging through collections, they contrast sharply with real-world demographics. AI-generated imagery extremely underrepresents women (3.5% vs 49% to 72% in reality) and disregards ethnic communities other than Caucasian (0% vs 18% to 36%). It only over-represents young curators (79% vs approx. 27%) but also renders curators to resemble yuppie professionals or people featuring in fashion advertising. Stereotypical attributes are prevalent, with curators widely depicted as wearing beards and holding clipboards or digital tablets. The findings highlight biases in the generative AI image creation dataset, which is poised to shape an inaccurate portrayal of museum professionals if the images were to be taken uncritically at face value.