Biases in LLM-Generated Musical Taste Profiles for Recommendation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sguerra, Bruno, Epure, Elena V., Lee, Harin, Moussallam, Manuel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sguerra, Bruno
Epure, Elena V.
Lee, Harin
Moussallam, Manuel
author_facet Sguerra, Bruno
Epure, Elena V.
Lee, Harin
Moussallam, Manuel
contents One particularly promising use case of Large Language Models (LLMs) for recommendation is the automatic generation of Natural Language (NL) user taste profiles from consumption data. These profiles offer interpretable and editable alternatives to opaque collaborative filtering representations, enabling greater transparency and user control. However, it remains unclear whether users consider these profiles to be an accurate representation of their taste, which is crucial for trust and usability. Moreover, because LLMs inherit societal and data-driven biases, profile quality may systematically vary across user and item characteristics. In this paper, we study this issue in the context of music streaming, where personalization is challenged by a large and culturally diverse catalog. We conduct a user study in which participants rate NL profiles generated from their own listening histories. We analyze whether identification with the profiles is biased by user attributes (e.g., mainstreamness, taste diversity) and item features (e.g., genre, country of origin). We also compare these patterns to those observed when using the profiles in a downstream recommendation task. Our findings highlight both the potential and limitations of scrutable, LLM-based profiling in personalized systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16708
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Biases in LLM-Generated Musical Taste Profiles for Recommendation
Sguerra, Bruno
Epure, Elena V.
Lee, Harin
Moussallam, Manuel
Information Retrieval
One particularly promising use case of Large Language Models (LLMs) for recommendation is the automatic generation of Natural Language (NL) user taste profiles from consumption data. These profiles offer interpretable and editable alternatives to opaque collaborative filtering representations, enabling greater transparency and user control. However, it remains unclear whether users consider these profiles to be an accurate representation of their taste, which is crucial for trust and usability. Moreover, because LLMs inherit societal and data-driven biases, profile quality may systematically vary across user and item characteristics. In this paper, we study this issue in the context of music streaming, where personalization is challenged by a large and culturally diverse catalog. We conduct a user study in which participants rate NL profiles generated from their own listening histories. We analyze whether identification with the profiles is biased by user attributes (e.g., mainstreamness, taste diversity) and item features (e.g., genre, country of origin). We also compare these patterns to those observed when using the profiles in a downstream recommendation task. Our findings highlight both the potential and limitations of scrutable, LLM-based profiling in personalized systems.
title Biases in LLM-Generated Musical Taste Profiles for Recommendation
topic Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16708