[bambax]

Absolutely!

> “A Mexican person” is usually a man in a sombrero.

They are asking for an image of a Mexican person.

If the result shows an infant, or a person in a business attire in front of a glass building, or a construction worker, or someone competing in a bike race, how would we know they're "Mexican"?

[TeMPOraL]

> They are asking for an image of a Mexican person.

Exactly. Even more so, they're asking for an image that is likely to be described as depicting a Mexican person. It should be obvious why, without additional detail in the prompt, the model will reach for features that'll make it obvious the person is a Mexican to a viewer with no other context - hence exaggerated stereotypes.

Artists do that too, all the time, if they want to communicate nationality in a "show, don't tell" way, and there is no other indicator in the image (such as location, or overall topic of the work).

[kaffeeringe]

But a Mexican could be a man in a suit.

That is, what they say. If you ask midjourney for the image of a Mexican man it produces this cliche. Most Mexicans don't look like that. Most will be closed to the Mexican in a suit.

I think, the result would be more diverse if you look for stick photos of Mexicab men.

This example only shows, what you can expect from every other prompt: a bias for cliches.

And yes, you are right: that is, what you ask for in Midjourney.

But you should know, that it's always a cliche.

[janalsncm]

> Most Mexicans don't look like that.

By definition this is true of any group. Most people do not look alike. There’s no way to have a single picture of what “most Mexicans” look like.

[Grimblewald]

So just ask for a man? if they should have tan skin, ask for that, if you need them to have latinx facial features, specify that. If you ask me, asking for it to generate 'a mexican man' is it self a little 'problematic' and so you get a slightly 'problematic' image in return. 'Racist' prompt in 'racist' prompt out you know?

[hn_acker]

> If the result shows an infant, or a person in a business attire in front of a glass building, or a construction worker, or someone competing in a bike race, how would we know they're "Mexican"?

If you asked an AI image generator for "a Mexican" and got back someone standing while wearing a biking suit (but with no bike in sight, mind you), do you need to know that the person in the image is Mexican? Do you need to verify by doing a visual check for stereotypical features?

Or would it be good enough for you to just believe that the AI gave you "a Mexican" and hence accept the image as a valid answer to your prompt?

[cesaref]

https://www.pexels.com/search/mexican%20person/

Quite a bit of variety there, looks pretty mexican to me!

[wavemode]

I would argue that one could complain about the vast majority of images on that page as also depicting some sort of Mexican stereotype.

[Terretta]

Indeed, your example explains what's going on perfectly.

Generative AI images are "plausible description generators" with a human in the loop.

They aren't trying to draw something, they're trying to get you to call what they draw something.

Given a prompt from a human, they produce an image likely to be labeled as such by a human.

"Well sure that's a Mexican person but I meant..." is not a valid caption.

[smugma]

Yes variety but lots of sombreros and maybe 50% dressed for day of the dead