Social stereotypes in text-to-image generation: Examining user perceptions and debiasing strategies

The rise of generative AI has fueled a shift from traditional search-based image retrieval to text-based image synthesis. While this advancement enables more creative and dynamic image generation, it also raises significant ethical concerns. The growing use of AI-generated images risks reinforcing or even amplifying societal stereotypes related to gender, race, and ethnicity, ultimately contributing to social divisions and distorting cultural representation in our digital world. As these technologies scale, robust frameworks to assess and mitigate social biases remain lacking. Our research addresses this gap by proposing an evaluation mechanism that leverages LLMs as judges while keeping humans in the loop. We evaluate this method across three prompt categories—Geocultural, Occupational, and Adjective—and three T2I models (DALL·E 3, Midjourney v6.1, and Stability AI Core). Additionally, we present a user study to understand how users perceive generated images and the social stereotypes embedded within them, ensuring our approach aligns with real-world expectations. Our findings reveal a key tension: while explicit prompt refinement can reduce stereotypical cues in images, it can also reduce contextual alignment to the original prompt. Conversely, our user study reveals how people often relate to stereotypical cues as more contextually relevant and recognizable. Our work seeks to ensure that text-based image synthesis preserves global diversity, fosters social inclusivity, and accurately represents real-world society.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Barve, Saharsh Sandeep

Contributors dc:contributor

• Saha, Koustuv

• Generative AI
• Social Computing
• Text-to-Image Generation
• Social Stereotypes
• User Perception
• Large Language Models
• Human-Computer Interaction

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Saharsh Barve

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129520

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129520