IEEE stops accepting papers with the “Lenna image”, featuring a 1972 Playboy model, after complaints that it makes some women feel unwelcome in computer science
The decision also lands amid repeated evidence that image technologies can reproduce gendered treatment, including reports of Lensa generating sexualized avatars for a female user. IEEE's policy makes the provenance and social meaning of a research image a publication-compliance question.
First-order effects
Authors submitting to IEEE must replace the Lenna image, while editors gain a clear basis to reject papers that retain it.
IEEE formally distances its publications from a widely recognized legacy test image whose origin conflicts with efforts to make computing more welcoming.
Second-order effects
Other publishers, conferences, course materials, and software documentation that still use the image face greater pressure to adopt alternative standard images.
Replacement images can become the new shared reference materials, reducing reliance on a legacy convention that had persisted partly through habit and interoperability.
Third-order effects
If replicated across research institutions, publication rules will increasingly govern not only technical validity but also the cultural provenance of commonly reused datasets, examples, and visuals.
The broader shift is toward treating inclusion as part of research infrastructure: standards bodies can alter field norms by changing what is admissible in formal venues.
The trend: Technical institutions are revising inherited research conventions as governance choices that shape who feels represented in the field.
I had NO idea this was a thing... “Lenna is a standard test image used in the field of digital image processing starting in 1973, but it is no longer considered appropriate by some authors. It is a picture of the Swedish model Lena Forsén, shot by photographer Dwight Hooker, cr…
A better Lena: https://mortenhannemose.github.io/ lena/ (Context: https://arstechnica.com/... - IEEE have finally removed it from the acceptable list of common test samples.)
While it's important to remember the history of this image and how it was used to further computer image processing, it is time to move onto newer test images. Lenna herself asked to move on in 2019. What should be the test images of the future?
Anyone who had anything to do even remotely with Image Processing would have seen this picture. I must have looked at this picture in different formats and resolutions, over 10,000 times, literally. Suddenly feeling old.
This image of “Lenna” brings back some sweet memories of my graduate assignment at Océ in '97 where I was working on a subpixel positioning system for copy machines. This image was mentioned there as the standard image for graphical processing. https://arstechnica.com/... [image]
This cropped image, taken from Playboy, has been used for five decades as a standard in image processing research. Finally, the IEEE follows other major academic publishers in prohibiting its use. And people wonder why there aren't more women in STEM. https://www.404media.co/...
seems a bit prudish ◾️ Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from IEEE computer journals: Use of “Lenna” image in computer image processing research stretches back to the 1970s. https://arstechnica.com/...
We probably should've used a better image from the get go, or just not make a single image the holy icon of image processing. https://arstechnica.com/... [image]
Also in “Jeebus that took a while” (I've softened my stance on the actual image a lot, I now mostly believe it's just not great test data anymore anyway, but the *reaction* of the field to criticism was the big tell) https://arstechnica.com/...
A big deal: @IEEEorg will stop accepting papers containing the Lena image — a photo published in Playboy & used for decades in image-processing research. It's a fascinating tale about how women are deeply embedded in the history of technology, whether we consent or not.
Banning Lena in the current legislative and cultural environment sends a clear message. It shows the length some are willing to go to expunge women (and especially sex workers) from the history of technology.
interesting that the Lena image — a computer vision benchmark that's also a Playboy centerfold — is now banned from IEEE papers as of April 1st. I wrote a little bit about its use for the LRB back in 2022 https://lrb.co.uk/... https://twitter.com/... [image]