Synthetic Dreams in Barbie Land: Speculative Queer Adventures with Feminist LLM-Generated Personas

This contribution presents a playful yet critical provocation, exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate synthetic personas inspired by the spirit of Barbie Land—a utopian world where empowerment, inclusivity, and imagination are central themes. Grounded in feminist and queer perspectives, the speculative approach emphasizes the value of fictional narratives as sources of inspiration for researchers, framing LLM-generated synthetic personas as tools for fostering critical dialogue, challenging systemic inequities, and advancing equity-driven design in research and practice. As part of on-going research, this contribution shows the initial findings of a multi-faceted speculative investigation, revealing biases present in AI-generated synthetic personas, and examining pathways for harnessing their creative potential to support more inclusive and socially conscious technological futures.