![]() Despite having the imprimatur of “hard science,” Kim notes, it turned out that much of the literature was made with the same biases, with Caucasian skin and hair being treated as the standard. For instance, early in the development of models for human features, computer graphics turned to the medical literature for guidance. Because racial bias is so deeply baked into the technology, though, there’s no quick fix. ![]() Thanks in part to the efforts of Kim and others in the field, there’s more awareness about the issue. “There are lots of stories out there and we haven’t told a bunch of them, so let's go tell these stories.” “We're supposed to be the leaders in storytelling,” said Kim. It’s a problem that severely limits what computer graphics artists can do, and how wide of an audience they can reach. For instance, articles in computer graphics journals often include only computer-generated images of white people when discussing skin rendering, even when the topic is broadly claimed as “humans.” And many of the lighting techniques used in computer graphics are based on guidelines for film lighting developed before the 1940s - long before the modern computer - and specifically designed for white skin. Before coming to Yale, he was a senior research scientist at Pixar, where his work can be seen in such movies as Cars 3, Coco, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4.įrom the ground up, computer graphics technology has been developed with the notion that the skin and hair of white people are the default when it comes to depicting humans. He’s seen the issue from the perspectives of both the industry and academia. Kim, who co-leads the Yale Computer Graphics Group, is among those who are trying to change that. However, when it comes to matters of race, and the means to depict characters of different ethnic backgrounds, the field remains very much in the past. ![]() In recent decades, the technology of computer graphics has made remarkable progress. “From there, it became clear that there was a whole body of scholarship on this topic, but its coverage of the digital age is still ongoing, especially with movie CGI.” “He introduced me to the book ‘White’ by Richard Dyer, which described how similar biases pervaded film technology in the analog era,” said Kim, associate professor of computer science. He met with the professor of the course, John MacKay, who confirmed that the pattern was real - and deep-seated in film history. That is, the degree of bias that exists in computer graphics technology toward the features of white people. “While I was assembling the materials, a pattern became clear to me,” he said. Shortly after arriving at Yale, Theodore Kim was invited to give a guest lecture on the history of computer-generated imagery (CGI) for a Film and Media Studies class. This article originally appeared in Yale Engineering Magazine.
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