Event
Invisible yet Exposed: How Generative AI Represents People with Invisible Disabilities
Place: Room 3.216 - Grand Paris Campus & online
Time: 12.00-01.30 PM
Speakers: Neva Bojovic & Vasiliki Mylonopoulou
Research across sociology, disability studies, and media studies has established that representations shape the social attitudes towards disability rather than simply reflecting it. As generative AI systems begin to produce images and text at scale, these representational forces are transferred into computational outputs, yet their application and implications on invisible disability remain poorly understood. Early studies indicate that models default to visible and stereotypical disability cues and therefore have limited capacity to depict disability types without stable visual markers. Addressing this tap, this study examines how generative AI represents invisible disability in simulated hiring scenarios by analyzing paired image and text outputs from three widely used platforms (Chat GPT, Copilot, and Le Chat). We develop an analytical framework that extends established theories of disability representation to the case of invisible disability and to the multimodal nature of generative systems. Applying this framework, we identify recurrent strategies through which models attempt to resolve the absence of fixed visual referents. These include visible substitution through objects or devices, affective and behavioral substitution, erasure following disability prompting, and mismatches between textual and visual content. We compare these patterns across disability categories and platforms. These outcomes replicate long standing representational constraints and introduce new ones, with implications for bias, fairness, and the interpretation of disability within AI mediated environments.
The project co-financing this research and visit is funded by Vinnova with reference number reference number 2024-02063 more about the project here: https://vasilikimylo.wixsite.com/ai-disability
Biographies:
Dr. Neva Bojovic is an Associate Professor at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux. She is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie alumna and holds a PhD from Grenoble École de Management and Université Savoie Mont Blanc (IREGE research laboratory). Her work examines the intersection of innovation, technology, and social change, with a specific focus on how emerging and enabling technologies are framed, how legitimacy is constructed in contested domains, and how organizational and field level identities evolve through experimentation. She advances research on stigma entrepreneurship, disability, and social innovation, analyzing how embodied difference and social recognition structure innovation processes. Her publications appear in journals such as Research Policy, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Social Science & Medicine, and Long Range Planning. She serves as an Associate Editor for Group and Organization Management.
Dr. Vasiliki Mylonopoulou is an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied IT at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a Marie Skłodowska‑Curie alumna. With a background in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), she focuses on designing Inclusive Digital Health services and products through involving people with lived experience in the design process. She works with and for people with chronic conditions to support them to live independently and remain connected to loved ones and healthcare professionals without compromising their privacy and autonomy. Her work appears in HCI forums as well as interdisciplinary health journals and she is involved in organization of conferences in her field. She teaches and develops courses on user‑centered and participatory design, inclusion in design, and Public and Patient Involvement in research and innovation at several universities in the Nordics in different levels of education. Vasiliki is also active in raising awareness about neurodiversity in academia and previously received the University of Oulu’s Equality and Diversity Award for this work. Currently she also serves as member of the Scientific council of the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media, and a Member Chair for the ACM-Women chapter in Gothenburg.
For further information, please contact Professor Margherita Pagani: margherita.pagani@skema.edu