A depressed woman, immodestly dressed, revealing half her cleavage, sits by the beach with a bottle of alcohol. A scruffy man, holding a drink, wearing two pairs of glares, and looks intoxicated. These two stereotypical images, of a man and woman from Goa, have gone viral on the internet.
These images were created and shared by an 24-year-old Gurgaon-based artist, Madhav Kohli, who created the images using AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform midjourney.com.
The artist released these images on social networking sites like Twitter and Instagram and captioned it 'Indian men, based on regional stereotypes'. There were stereotypical images of men from West Bengal, Delhi, Punjab, Goa, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Maharashtra.
The next set of images were of women and was titled 'Stereotypical women of India'. This included images of women from Punjab, Assam, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Maharashtra, etc.
Comments like 'Another stereotypical nonsense'; 'Strange how women from the other places have no setting around them... The woman in Goa however is shown looking presumably stoned/inebriated at presumably a bar with a bottle of presumably liquor in front of her. Some stereotype!'; 'When Delhiwalas come to Goa'; 'Typical Desi tourist. Why label them as Goan', etc. were retweeted by users on Twitter and Instagram as soon as the stereotypical image of a woman from Goa was shared by the artist.
Other comments were 'This type of stereotyping of Goan women is highly objectionable and condemnable', 'I don't think this representation of #goa is correct. Goa has mixed culture but when you portray representative from each states, this image certainly against the image of Goa, wrong depiction for'.
When the image of a stereotypical Goan was shared, they found the AI created image to be similar to actor Chunky Pandey, and an entire thread of how these images were similar to the Bollywood start started on the internet, with comments such as ...
'Naah man, all of us aren't hippies', 'Chunky Pandey represents Goa vibes? Lol','Bhai ye goa walo ko kya samajhte hai?????' etc.
After sharing the images, the artist received backlash and harsh comments, due to which Kohli went on to share a screenshot of the meaning of 'Stereotype'.
In various interviews, the artist has shared that through these images, he wanted to shed light on the stereotypical images that people in different parts of India have.
He also focused on what Indians think about people or places, and said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) picks up data from various libraries and websites and attempts to create an image by utilising available information.
