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Main Authors: Li, Kun, Po, Lai-Man, Yang, Hongzheng, Xu, Xuyuan, Liu, Kangcheng, Zhao, Yuzhi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11620
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author Li, Kun
Po, Lai-Man
Yang, Hongzheng
Xu, Xuyuan
Liu, Kangcheng
Zhao, Yuzhi
author_facet Li, Kun
Po, Lai-Man
Yang, Hongzheng
Xu, Xuyuan
Liu, Kangcheng
Zhao, Yuzhi
contents Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are increasingly applied in Personalized Image Aesthetic Assessment (PIAA) as a scalable alternative to expert evaluations. However, their predictions may reflect subtle biases influenced by demographic factors such as gender, age, and education. In this work, we propose AesBiasBench, a benchmark designed to evaluate MLLMs along two complementary dimensions: (1) stereotype bias, quantified by measuring variations in aesthetic evaluations across demographic groups; and (2) alignment between model outputs and genuine human aesthetic preferences. Our benchmark covers three subtasks (Aesthetic Perception, Assessment, Empathy) and introduces structured metrics (IFD, NRD, AAS) to assess both bias and alignment. We evaluate 19 MLLMs, including proprietary models (e.g., GPT-4o, Claude-3.5-Sonnet) and open-source models (e.g., InternVL-2.5, Qwen2.5-VL). Results indicate that smaller models exhibit stronger stereotype biases, whereas larger models align more closely with human preferences. Incorporating identity information often exacerbates bias, particularly in emotional judgments. These findings underscore the importance of identity-aware evaluation frameworks in subjective vision-language tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_11620
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AesBiasBench: Evaluating Bias and Alignment in Multimodal Language Models for Personalized Image Aesthetic Assessment
Li, Kun
Po, Lai-Man
Yang, Hongzheng
Xu, Xuyuan
Liu, Kangcheng
Zhao, Yuzhi
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are increasingly applied in Personalized Image Aesthetic Assessment (PIAA) as a scalable alternative to expert evaluations. However, their predictions may reflect subtle biases influenced by demographic factors such as gender, age, and education. In this work, we propose AesBiasBench, a benchmark designed to evaluate MLLMs along two complementary dimensions: (1) stereotype bias, quantified by measuring variations in aesthetic evaluations across demographic groups; and (2) alignment between model outputs and genuine human aesthetic preferences. Our benchmark covers three subtasks (Aesthetic Perception, Assessment, Empathy) and introduces structured metrics (IFD, NRD, AAS) to assess both bias and alignment. We evaluate 19 MLLMs, including proprietary models (e.g., GPT-4o, Claude-3.5-Sonnet) and open-source models (e.g., InternVL-2.5, Qwen2.5-VL). Results indicate that smaller models exhibit stronger stereotype biases, whereas larger models align more closely with human preferences. Incorporating identity information often exacerbates bias, particularly in emotional judgments. These findings underscore the importance of identity-aware evaluation frameworks in subjective vision-language tasks.
title AesBiasBench: Evaluating Bias and Alignment in Multimodal Language Models for Personalized Image Aesthetic Assessment
topic Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11620