Playing Bias: Epistemic Games for Interpreting Text-to-Image Models

Abstract

Text-to-image (T2I) systems do not merely render prompts; they circulate defaults for “what X looks like,” shaping recognition through pose, camera, costume, props, and setting. While technical audits quantify disparities, they rarely cultivate the literacy needed to argue how images assemble stereotypes and confer authority. This paper translates a three-stage, humanities-informed framework into a set of epistemic games that make this cultural work visible and debatable: Interpret (art-historical close looking with AI outputs), Interrogate (counter-intent prompting as artistic exploration), and Expose (creative misuse through paired prompts with a constant motif and a BiasSlot rule, in which only the bias cue varies). In a pilot with undergraduate fine-arts students, the games shifted discussion from impressionistic reactions to concise, warranted hypotheses grounded in visual evidence, supported by lightweight classroom instruments that enabled reproducibility and structured collaboration. We argue that such game-based approaches foster critical literacy across educational contexts, equipping learners to recognize, discuss, and contest how T2I models encode bias.