mlsanityData to 13 Oct 2026

AI's Regimes of Representation: A Community-centered Study of Text-to-Image Models in South Asia

arXiv 2305.11844 ↗First posted 19 May 2023cs.CY cs.AI cs.HCcited by 54

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Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents a community-centered study of cultural limitations of text-to-image (T2I) models in the South Asian context. We theorize these failures using scholarship on dominant media regimes of representations and locate them within participants' reporting of their existing social marginalizations. We thus show how generative AI can reproduce an outsiders gaze for viewing South Asian cultures, shaped by global and regional power inequities. By centering communities as experts and soliciting their perspectives on T2I limitations, our study adds rich nuance into existing evaluative frameworks and deepens our understanding of the culturally-specific ways AI technologies can fail in non-Western and Global South settings. We distill lessons for responsible development of T2I models, recommending concrete pathways forward that can allow for recognition of structural inequalities.

Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Builds on 30 of its 126 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 May 2023.

Builds on

30 of 126 references.

References · 30

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,588
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,777
  3. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,564
  4. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,339
  5. 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,284
  6. 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,289
  7. 2021Multimodal datasets: misogyny, pornography, and malignant stereotypescited by 327
  8. 2022Easily Accessible Text-to-Image Generation Amplifies Demographic Stereotypes at Large Scalecited by 262
  9. 2020Data and its (dis)contents: A survey of dataset development and use in machine learning researchcited by 259
  10. 2020Large image datasets: A pyrrhic win for computer vision?cited by 237
  11. 2019Towards a Critical Race Methodology in Algorithmic Fairnesscited by 125
  12. 2020Participation is not a Design Fix for Machine Learningcited by 111
18 more
  1. 2021Re-imagining Algorithmic Fairness in India and Beyondcited by 104
  2. 2020Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligencecited by 101
  3. 2022How well can Text-to-Image Generative Models understand Ethical Natural Language Interventions?cited by 92
  4. 2022Is Your Toxicity My Toxicity? Exploring the Impact of Rater Identity on Toxicity Annotationcited by 68
  5. 2022CrowdWorkSheets: Accounting for Individual and Collective Identities Underlying Crowdsourced Dataset Annotationcited by 59
  6. 2021Whose Ground Truth? Accounting for Individual and Collective Identities Underlying Dataset Annotationcited by 51
  7. 2022Contrastive Language-Vision AI Models Pretrained on Web-Scraped Multimodal Data Exhibit Sexual Objectification Biascited by 43
  8. 2022Measuring Representational Harms in Image Captioningcited by 36
  9. 2022The Forgotten Margins of AI Ethicscited by 30
  10. 2022Underspecification in Scene Description-to-Depiction Taskscited by 30
  11. 2020Biases in Generative Art -- A Causal Look from the Lens of Art Historycited by 26
  12. 2021Stakeholder Participation in AI: Beyond "Add Diverse Stakeholders and Stir"cited by 26
  13. 2022Rethinking Fairness: An Interdisciplinary Survey of Critiques of Hegemonic ML Fairness Approachescited by 23
  14. 2021Image Cropping on Twitter: Fairness Metrics, their Limitations, and the Importance of Representation, Design, and Agencycited by 22
  15. 2022A Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis of Community-Collaborative Approaches to Computing Researchcited by 14
  16. 2020Non-portability of Algorithmic Fairness in Indiacited by 7
  17. 2021Visual Conceptual Blending with Large-scale Language and Vision Modelscited by 4
  18. 2022Manifestations of Xenophobia in AI Systemscited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 13 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 22; 2025: 17; 2026: 13.

54 papers.

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  1. 2024Collective Constitutional AI: Aligning a Language Model with Public Inputcited by 123
  2. 2024Survey of Bias In Text-to-Image Generation: Definition, Evaluation, and Mitigationcited by 66
  3. 2024AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuancescited by 59
  4. 2024Beyond Aesthetics: Cultural Competence in Text-to-Image Modelscited by 30
  5. 2024A Robot Walks into a Bar: Can Language Models Serve as Creativity Support Tools for Comedy? An Evaluation of LLMs' Humour Alignment with Comedianscited by 29
  6. 2024ViSAGe: A Global-Scale Analysis of Visual Stereotypes in Text-to-Image Generationcited by 27
  7. 2023Disentangling Perceptions of Offensiveness: Cultural and Moral Correlatescited by 26
  8. 2023Building Socio-culturally Inclusive Stereotype Resources with Community Engagementcited by 25
  9. 2024Do Generative AI Models Output Harm while Representing Non-Western Cultures: Evidence from A Community-Centered Approachcited by 25
  10. 2024DOSA: A Dataset of Social Artifacts from Different Indian Geographical Subculturescited by 23
  11. 2024Beyond Behaviorist Representational Harms: A Plan for Measurement and Mitigationcited by 17
  12. 2024Towards Geographic Inclusion in the Evaluation of Text-to-Image Modelscited by 16
38 more
  1. 2024Epistemic Injustice in Generative AIcited by 16
  2. 2025The Case for "Thick Evaluations" of Cultural Representation in AIcited by 16
  3. 2024Harm Amplification in Text-to-Image Modelscited by 15
  4. 2024From Melting Pots to Misrepresentations: Exploring Harms in Generative AIcited by 13
  5. 2025TALES: A Taxonomy and Analysis of Cultural Representations in LLM-generated Storiescited by 10
  6. 2025Fluent but Foreign: Even Regional LLMs Lack Cultural Alignmentcited by 9
  7. 2024Discipline and Label: A WEIRD Genealogy and Social Theory of Data Annotationcited by 8
  8. 2025LIVS: A Pluralistic Alignment Dataset for Inclusive Public Spacescited by 8
  9. 2025A Tale of Two Identities: An Ethical Audit of Human and AI-Crafted Personascited by 8
  10. 2024Data Feminism for AIcited by 6
  11. 2025Whose Truth? Pluralistic Geo-Alignment for (Agentic) AIcited by 6
  12. 2025Invisible Filters: Cultural Bias in Hiring Evaluations Using Large Language Modelscited by 6
  13. 2024Position: Cracking the Code of Cascading Disparity Towards Marginalized Communitiescited by 4
  14. 2024KAHANI: Culturally-Nuanced Visual Storytelling Tool for Non-Western Culturescited by 4
  15. 2024From Fake Perfects to Conversational Imperfects: Exploring Image-Generative AI as a Boundary Object for Participatory Design of Public Spacescited by 3
  16. 2025Through the Prism of Culture: Evaluating LLMs' Understanding of Indian Subcultures and Traditionscited by 3
  17. 2025Understanding Gender Bias in AI-Generated Product Descriptionscited by 3
  18. 2025Surfacing Subtle Stereotypes: A Multilingual, Debate-Oriented Evaluation of Modern LLMscited by 3
  19. 2025Anecdoctoring: Automated Red-Teaming Across Language and Placecited by 2
  20. 2026Aesthetics as Structural Harm: Algorithmic Lookism Across Text-to-Image Generation and Classificationcited by 2
  21. 2026A Unified Framework to Quantify Cultural Intelligence of AIcited by 2
  22. 2024Offline Evaluation of Set-Based Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1
  23. 2025RusCode: Russian Cultural Code Benchmark for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1
  24. 2025The erasure of intensive livestock farming in text-to-image generative AIcited by 1
  25. 2026Interrogating Design Homogenization in Web Vibe Codingcited by 1
  26. 2026Going PLACES: Participatory Localized Red Teaming for Text-to-Image Safety in the Global Southcited by 1
  27. 2026PLURAL: A Global Dataset for Value Alignmentcited by 1
  28. 2026Prompt Revision as a Source of Cultural Bias in Text-to-Image Systemscited by 1
  29. 2024Recourse for reclamation: Chatting with generative language modelscited by 0
  30. 2024Uncovering Regional Defaults from Photorealistic Forests in Text-to-Image Generation with DALL-E 2cited by 0
  31. 2024Dialogue with the Machine and Dialogue with the Art World: Evaluating Generative AI for Culturally-Situated Creativitycited by 0
  32. 2025Text-to-Image Models and Their Representation of People from Different Nationalities Engaging in Activitiescited by 0
  33. 2025Kaleidoscope Gallery: Exploring Ethics and Generative AI Through Artcited by 0
  34. 2025How do datasets, developers, and models affect biases in a low-resourced language?: The Case of the Bengali Languagecited by 0
  35. 2025"Just a strange pic": Evaluating 'safety' in GenAI Image safety annotation tasks from diverse annotators' perspectivescited by 0
  36. 2026Compounding Disadvantage: Auditing Intersectional Bias in LLM-Generated Explanations Across Indian and American STEM Educationcited by 0
  37. 2026Operationalizing Fairness in Text-to-Image Models: A Survey of Bias, Fairness Audits and Mitigation Strategiescited by 0
  38. 2026Beyond Categories of Caste: Examining Caste Bias and Morality in Text-to-Image AI Modelscited by 0

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)