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Distorted representations of age and gender are reflected in AI models

A big-data analysis shows that online content represents men as older than women in the same occupations and social roles, and that AI reproduces these warped presentations.
By
  1. Ana Macanovic

    1. Ana Macanovic is in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, 50014 Fiesole, Italy.

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Humans’ perceptions of the social world around us are increasingly shaped by what we see and read online. Empirical work has shown that media (both online and offline) can perpetuate social stereotypes1,2 and thereby bias our perceptions of reality3. In the past few years, these biases have been at risk of further amplification by artificial intelligence (AI). Writing in Nature, Guilbeault et al.4 ask whether portrayals of gender and age online accurately reflect the social reality, and how these portrayals interact with AI systems and our own perceptions.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02974-0

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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