Decoding Fatphobia: Examining Anti-Fat and Pro-Thin Bias in AI-Generated Images

Jane Warren, Gary M. Weiss, Fernando Martinez, Annika Guo, Yijun Zhao


Abstract
Existing studies have shown that AI-generated images tend to reinforce social biases, including those related to race and gender. However, no studies have investigated weight bias, or fatphobia, in AI-generated images. This study utilizes DALL-E 3 to determine the extent to which anti-fat and pro-thin biases are present in AI-generated images, and examines stereotypical associations between moral character and body weight. Four-thousand images are generated using twenty pairs of positive and negative textual prompts. These images are then manually labeled with weight information and analyzed to determine the extent to which they reflect fatphobia. The findings and their impact are discussed and related to existing research on weight bias.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-naacl.266
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2025
Month:
April
Year:
2025
Address:
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Editors:
Luis Chiruzzo, Alan Ritter, Lu Wang
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
4724–4736
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.findings-naacl.266/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Jane Warren, Gary M. Weiss, Fernando Martinez, Annika Guo, and Yijun Zhao. 2025. Decoding Fatphobia: Examining Anti-Fat and Pro-Thin Bias in AI-Generated Images. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2025, pages 4724–4736, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Decoding Fatphobia: Examining Anti-Fat and Pro-Thin Bias in AI-Generated Images (Warren et al., Findings 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.findings-naacl.266.pdf