Bollywood movies continue to associate beauty with fair skin, AI study finds
Computer scientists used NLP to explore how films reflect social biases
Evolving trends
The study also evaluated the prevalence of female characters in films by comparing the number of gendered pronouns in the subtitles.
The results indicate that the progress towards gender parity in both Hollywood and Bollywood has been slow and fluctuating
The male pronoun ratio in both film industries had dipped far less over time than a selection of Google Books. The researchers also analyzed sentiments about dowry in India since it became illegal in 1961 by analyzing the vocabulary with which it was it was connected in the films.
They found words including “loan,” “debt,” and “jewelry” in movies of the 1950s, suggesting compliance with the practice. But by the 2000s, the words most closely associated with dowry were more negative examples, such as “trouble,” “divorce,” and “refused,” indicating non-compliance or more gloomy consequences.
“All of these things we kind of knew, but now we have numbers to quantify them,” said study co-authorAshiqur R. KhudaBukhsh. “And we can also see the progress over the last 70 years as these biases have been reduced.”
The study shows that NLP can uncover how popular culture reflects social biases. The next step could be using the tech to show how popular culture influences those biases.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.
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