Going PLACES: Participatory Localized Red Teaming for Text-to-Image Safety in the Global South

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rastogi, Charvi, Bhutani, Mukul, Kahng, Minsuk, Muhammad, Shamsuddeen Hassan, Razumovskaia, Evgeniia, Suresh, Priyanka, Ahmad, Ibrahim Said, Kalia, Charu, Mahomed, Yaaseen, Maji, Madhurima, Lee, Minjae, Parrish, Alicia, Quaye, Jessica, Reddi, Vijay Janapa, Verma, Aishwarya, Aroyo, Lora
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Rastogi, Charvi
Bhutani, Mukul
Kahng, Minsuk
Muhammad, Shamsuddeen Hassan
Razumovskaia, Evgeniia
Suresh, Priyanka
Ahmad, Ibrahim Said
Kalia, Charu
Mahomed, Yaaseen
Maji, Madhurima
Lee, Minjae
Parrish, Alicia
Quaye, Jessica
Reddi, Vijay Janapa
Verma, Aishwarya
Aroyo, Lora
author_facet Rastogi, Charvi
Bhutani, Mukul
Kahng, Minsuk
Muhammad, Shamsuddeen Hassan
Razumovskaia, Evgeniia
Suresh, Priyanka
Ahmad, Ibrahim Said
Kalia, Charu
Mahomed, Yaaseen
Maji, Madhurima
Lee, Minjae
Parrish, Alicia
Quaye, Jessica
Reddi, Vijay Janapa
Verma, Aishwarya
Aroyo, Lora
contents Despite the global deployment of text-to-image (T2I) models, their safety frameworks are largely calibrated to a Western-centric default, creating significant vulnerabilities for the rest of the world. To embrace cultural pluralism and bring historically under-represented perspectives in T2I safety, we conduct localised community-centered red teaming studies in the Global South. Our two-fold approach prioritizes localization and participation, by focusing on secondary urban centers in these regions, and conducting community engagement and training workshops to contextualize local norms. As a result, we present PLACES, a dataset comprising over 26,000 examples of T2I model failures collected in partnership with universities in Ghana, Nigeria, and two regions of India (Karnataka and Punjab). Analysis of prompts collected reveals a wide-ranging diversity in socio-cultural and linguistic attributes, when compared to existing geography-agnostic crowdsourced red-teaming data. We observe unique adversarial patterns enabled by local cultural and linguistic nuances, and distinct clusters within region around specific themes, such as religion in India. Moreover, we uncover structural contextual gaps in existing safety frameworks by identifying novel harms showing normative dissonance (e.g., violating religious norms, ignoring local customs, and ominous symbolism). This work argues that expanding T2I safety requires moving beyond mere scale to incorporate deeply localised, participatory methodologies for data collection and contextualization. Content warning: This paper includes examples containing potentially harmful or offensive content.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_19190
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Going PLACES: Participatory Localized Red Teaming for Text-to-Image Safety in the Global South
Rastogi, Charvi
Bhutani, Mukul
Kahng, Minsuk
Muhammad, Shamsuddeen Hassan
Razumovskaia, Evgeniia
Suresh, Priyanka
Ahmad, Ibrahim Said
Kalia, Charu
Mahomed, Yaaseen
Maji, Madhurima
Lee, Minjae
Parrish, Alicia
Quaye, Jessica
Reddi, Vijay Janapa
Verma, Aishwarya
Aroyo, Lora
Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Despite the global deployment of text-to-image (T2I) models, their safety frameworks are largely calibrated to a Western-centric default, creating significant vulnerabilities for the rest of the world. To embrace cultural pluralism and bring historically under-represented perspectives in T2I safety, we conduct localised community-centered red teaming studies in the Global South. Our two-fold approach prioritizes localization and participation, by focusing on secondary urban centers in these regions, and conducting community engagement and training workshops to contextualize local norms. As a result, we present PLACES, a dataset comprising over 26,000 examples of T2I model failures collected in partnership with universities in Ghana, Nigeria, and two regions of India (Karnataka and Punjab). Analysis of prompts collected reveals a wide-ranging diversity in socio-cultural and linguistic attributes, when compared to existing geography-agnostic crowdsourced red-teaming data. We observe unique adversarial patterns enabled by local cultural and linguistic nuances, and distinct clusters within region around specific themes, such as religion in India. Moreover, we uncover structural contextual gaps in existing safety frameworks by identifying novel harms showing normative dissonance (e.g., violating religious norms, ignoring local customs, and ominous symbolism). This work argues that expanding T2I safety requires moving beyond mere scale to incorporate deeply localised, participatory methodologies for data collection and contextualization. Content warning: This paper includes examples containing potentially harmful or offensive content.
title Going PLACES: Participatory Localized Red Teaming for Text-to-Image Safety in the Global South
topic Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19190