@inproceedings{yongsatianchot-sailamul-2025-brown,
    title = "Brown Like Chocolate: How Vision-Language Models Associate Skin Tone with Food Colors",
    author = "Yongsatianchot, Nutchanon  and
      Sailamul, Pachaya",
    editor = "Zhang, Chen  and
      Allaway, Emily  and
      Shen, Hua  and
      Miculicich, Lesly  and
      Li, Yinqiao  and
      M'hamdi, Meryem  and
      Limkonchotiwat, Peerat  and
      Bai, Richard He  and
      T.y.s.s., Santosh  and
      Han, Sophia Simeng  and
      Thapa, Surendrabikram  and
      Rim, Wiem Ben",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 9th Widening NLP Workshop",
    month = nov,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Suzhou, China",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-emnlp/2025.winlp-main.32/",
    pages = "210--223",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-351-7",
    abstract = "We investigate how Vision-Language Models (VLMs) leverage visual features when making analogical comparisons about people. Using synthetic images of individuals varying in skin tone and nationality, we prompt GPT and Gemini models to make analogical associations with desserts and drinks. Results reveal that VLMs systematically associate darker-skinned individuals with brown-colored food items, with GPT showing stronger associations than Gemini. These patterns are amplified in Thai versus English prompts, suggesting language-dependent encoding of visual stereotypes. The associations persist across manipulation checks including position swapping and clothing changes, though presenting individuals alone yields divergent language-specific patterns. This work reveals concerning associations in VLMs' visual reasoning that vary by language, with important implications for multilingual deployment."
}