WHEN IS A 'GIRL' NOT A 'GIRL'?
Policy Watch SA questions the motives underpinning a popular AI text-to-image community art platform's dedication of an entire website browsing page to 'girl' (the platform also has separate 'woman' and 'female' browsing pages)
*Disclaimer: By providing examples of the way women are portrayed by AI text-to-image art generators and on community platforms providing access to the software, Policy Watch SA is simply drawing attention to apparently widespread concerns about the underpinning issues explored here. This should not be misinterpreted as condemnation of a specific software model, community platform or their users/members.
In the art world, nude portrayals of the female body tend to be associated with fine art. By contrast, semi-nude portrayals of the female body are "more commonly found in commercial contexts and ... used to evoke desire and allure" (ThisVsThat). "Both forms of representation have had a significant impact on art and popular culture, sparking debates about beauty standards, objectification, and the role of women in society".
surely this little girl doesn't belong here?
users tag their images #girl so that they'll appear on the 'girl' page
the rows of images below are copied from the 'girl' page of a popular AI text-to-image community art platform – illustrating how the images of pre-adolescent girl children and conservatively dressed adolescent girls appear among over-sexualised images of young women
anime girl images often send mixed messages
another little girl in worrying company
does this fresh-faced teenager really belong here?
for more information on what's meant by NSFW, see the red section at the bottom of this page
another confusing anime
in this row, we have 'girls' working out (and a cabaret singer) ...
NSFW means content not safe/suitable for viewing in a public, formal, or controlled environment such as a workplace, school or family setting. Many workplaces and schools have policies prohibiting access to sexual and graphic subject matter (Wikipedia)
more sources of information on NSFW and related issues include:
Understanding US law on NSFW content: a 2025 guide for AI and image generation users (David Fornelli)
The algorithmic gaze: representations of women in AI art (Danielle King)
ARE AI TEXT-TO-IMAGE MODELS TRAINED TO OBJECTIFY WOMEN?
Policy Watch SA explores this worrying possibility
the 'most effective' AI text-to-image models 'have generally been trained on massive amounts of image and text data scraped from the web' (Wikipedia)
web scraping, web harvesting and web data extraction are terms referring to the automated process of website data copying using a bot or web crawler (Wikipedia)
because human annotators control the process of labelling data for analysis, cultural and/or personal biases may influence data interpretation and the algorithmic outcome (Chapman University AI hub)
if the data used to train an AI algorithm is not diverse or representative, biased output can occur (Chapman University AI hub)​​
if an AI text-to-image model 'learns from biased language or imagery', 'it may unknowingly generate prejudiced or stereotypical outputs' (Chapman University AI hub)
algorithmic bias can be used to reinforce social biases, including those associated with gender and sexuality (Wikipedia)