108: Generative AI Has a Body Bias: Who Gets to Be Seen?

Welcome back to Appearance Matters: The Podcast! In this month’s episode, Kat speaks to Dr Aisha Sobey. Aisha is a Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, where she studies the ethical implications of Generative AI and digital health systems, especially focusing on the impacts on non-normative bodies, employing Political Economy, Science and Technology Studies, Fat Studies, and Disability Studies theories in her work.

Read more about Aisha’s work here: https://www.lcfi.ac.uk/people/aisha-sobey

Read Aisha’s study on GenAI and weight bias here: Sobey, A. (2025). The thinness of GenAI: Body size in relation to the construction of the normate through GenAI image models. AI and Ethics, 5(4), 4181–4196. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-025-00684-x

If you’re interested in hearing more about the Appearance Matters Conference, hosted by the Centre for Appearance Research (9th – 11th of June 2026), click here: https://www.uwe.ac.uk/research/centres-and-groups/appearance/news-and-events/am-conference

Cover image by Trevor James

Episode image by Yutong Liu & Digit / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Music by Sian Evans & John Landau: toplinefilm.com

Episode developed and produced by Kat Schneider