Asking ChatGPT How to Fight Visual Ageism on Websites: Pitfall or Opportunity?

This paper explores the extent to which ChatGPT can be used to combat visual ageism, i.e., “the social practice of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way” [1, p.164] on websites. First, insights from earlier empirical studies on visual ageism are presented to illustrate how ageist pictures can be injurious to older people and howto combat this. Then, a chat session with ChatGPT will be used to discover whether the tool can generate reliable advice on how to counter visual ageism on websites. Finally, ChatGPT’s advice will be evaluated from a scientific point of view.