Some online stock photos depicting women and minorities are increasingly coming under fire from critics who say they could perpetuate racist and misogynistic stereotypes.
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Stock photo sites have been accused of underrepresenting minorities and marginalized groups. Photos downloaded from these sites have gotten some politicians in trouble for using the wrong ethnicity in campaigns. And in a few isolated cases, the images appear to denigrate the people they represent.
“There is implicit bias in stock photos, largely due to the way the images are tagged and categorized,” Minal Bopaiah, founder and principal consultant at Brevity & Wit, a design firm focused on diversity, said in an email interview. “For example, if you search for ‘attractive woman,’ most stock photo databases will return results that are predominantly white and of the same body size and shape. There are very few women of color that show up, and almost never any images of women with visible disabilities.”
A quick search of stock photo sites turned up illustrations that appeared biased. A Lifewire review of Getty Images turned up several images that appeared to reinforce anti-Semitic stereotypes. For example, one image shows a man with a long nose and devil wings holding a coin. The illustration is labeled "Making a Deal with the Devil, a horned red demon flying and showing a man a Bitcoin Cryptocurrency."
