Have you ever encountered a situation where an Asian person is interacting with a white person, either as a mixed-race couple or as friends of different races?In my experience, this seems quite common as I have many white friends! However, it appears that Meta's AI-powered image generator has difficulty imagining such scenarios. I tried multiple attempts to generate images using prompts like "Asian man and Caucasian friend, " "Asian man and white wife, " and "Asian woman and Caucasian husband. " Unfortunately, Meta's image generator only provided an accurate image featuring the specified races once. When I attempted to tweak the text-based prompt, it didn't yield the desired results. For instance, when I asked for an "Asian man and white woman smiling with a dog, " Meta's text generator on Instagram showed three consecutive pictures of two Asian people. Even when I changed "white" to "Caucasian, " it produced the same outcome. Similarly, when I requested an image of an "Asian man and Caucasian woman on their wedding day, " it displayed an Asian man in a suit alongside an Asian woman wearing a traditional-looking garment, which upon closer inspection appeared to be a blend of a qipao and a kimono. It's worth noting the beauty of multiculturalism. It's not just romantic relationships that the image generator struggled with; representations of platonic relationships also seemed to be a challenge. Each time I asked for an image of an "Asian man with Caucasian friend" or an "Asian woman with white friend, " the generated images showed two Asian individuals. Interestingly, when I specified an "Asian woman with Black friend, " it finally presented two Asian women.

Adjusting the phrasing to "Asian woman with African American friend" provided more accurate results. Curiously, the tool showed slightly better performance when I specified South Asian individuals. It was successful in creating an image with the prompt "South Asian man with Caucasian wife, " but immediately afterwards, it generated an image of two South Asian people using the same prompt. Unfortunately, the system relied on stereotypes, incorporating elements like a bindi and sari into the images of South Asian women without any prompt to do so. The inability of the image generator to imagine Asian individuals in the presence of white individuals is not only troubling, but there are more subtle indications of bias in its automatic results. Notably, Meta's tool consistently portrayed "Asian women" as having East Asian features and light complexions, even though India, a South Asian country, has the largest population in the world. It incorporated culturally specific attire without being prompted to do so. Furthermore, while it generated several images of older Asian men, the Asian women were always portrayed as young. Out of all the attempts, the only successful image generated was from the prompt "Asian woman with Caucasian husband, " featuring an older man with a young, light-skinned Asian woman. However, when I tried the same prompt again, it reverted back to showing an Asian man (also older) with an Asian woman. Meta has not provided an immediate response to a request for comment. Meta introduced its AI image generator tools last year, but it has faced issues such as people creating inappropriate content like nude images and Nintendo characters holding guns. It's important to remember that AI systems often reflect the biases of their creators, trainers, and the datasets they are trained on. In US media, "Asian" typically refers to East Asian individuals, potentially contributing to Meta's system assuming that all "Asian" people look the same. However, in reality, Asians are a diverse group with varied backgrounds and experiences, often sharing little in common besides a census category.