Adhering, steering, and queering: treatment of gender in natural language generation

Natural Language Generation (NLG) supports the creation of personalized, contextualized, and targeted content. However, the algorithms underpinning NLG have come under scrutiny for reinforcing gender, racial, and other problematic biases. Recent research in NLG seeks to remove these biases through principles of fairness and privacy. Drawing on gender and queer theories from sociology and Science and Technology studies, we consider how NLG can contribute towards the advancement of gender equity in society. We propose a conceptual framework and technical parameters for aligning NLG with feminist HCI qualities. We present three approaches: (1) adhering to current approaches of removing sensitive gender attributes, (2) steering gender differences away from the norm, and (3) queering gender by troubling stereotypes. We discuss the advantages and limitations of these approaches across three hypothetical scenarios; newspaper headlines, job advertisements, and chatbots. We conclude by discussing considerations for implementing this framework and related ethical and equity agendas.