PGA Tour’s AI-Generated Images Of Golfers Spark Backlash Over Racial Bias
The PGA Tour, the world’s premier membership organization for touring professional golfers, posted AI-generated headshots of their players on Instagram.
While the white players appeared against gray neutral backdrops, the players of color appeared against “rugged” and delipidated backdrops, reigniting concerns over racial bias.
What Happened?
The PGA Tour released 12 images of players on Instagram, with the caption: “We asked AI to expand our player’s headshots… Here’s what happened.”
The photos included 10 white players and 2 players of color, Tony Finau and Collin Morikawa.
Finau is of Tongan and Samoan descent and is the first person of such ancestry to play on the PGA Tour.
His headshot was placed in front of what AI ethicist Paige Lord described as a “rugged” background.
Morikawa, who is of Chinese and Japanese descent, was also placed in front of a similar background.
The remaining 10 golfers were placed in front of gray neutral backdrops by the AI generator.
“Here we have two players of color who are portrayed in environments that are very different from all of the other environments,” Lord said in the video.
Instagram users also expressed concerns in the comment, with one writing, “Can’t help but notice the difference in the last slide. Two people of color depicted as working class = a firm representation of racial bias in AI models.”
Bias in AI-Generated Images
Bias in AI-generated images has been a concern over the past several months for people of color.
In July 2023, Black artists were among the creators who found an issue with the inaccurate results produced by AI image generators.
The free-to-use graphic design tool Canva also came under fire this year after being prompted to generate an image of a Black woman with Bantu knots.
An error message appeared saying, “Bantu may result in unsafe or offensive content.”
Lord said in her video of the recent PGA incident, “It’s important to address two things related to this.”
“The first one is that there’s bias in AI and that AI is largely beholden to whatever it has been trained on.”
She also addressed the PGA’s social media management team’s duty to prevent posting harmful images.
“If they’re going to be leveraging AI, take a look at what it is producing and ask the question about whether or not they want to put that out there in the world,” she said.
