It’s everything that’s currently wrong with artificial intelligence in a single tweet.
Elizabeth Laraki posted on X/Twitter about a bad experience she had with AI. Elizabeth Laraki is due to speak at an (unnamed) UX/AI conference later this year, and came across an ad for the event featuring the photo she’d supplied. Except it wasn’t: the image used in the tweet was subtly different. Whereas her original photo showed an appropriately-dressed businesswoman, the doctored image showed her shirt unbuttoned to reveal a suggestive peak of her bra.
Who was this rogue air brusher? Women working in the tech industry won’t be surprised to learn that the villain, ironically, is artificial intelligence itself. It turns out the organizers had used an AI tool when cropping and sizing the image, and it had automatically decided to make Elizabeth look far racier than she’d ever have wanted. What caused the AI to act in such an inappropriate and sexist manner? Simple: because so much female imagery online is sexualized, AI is trained to think this is how women should look.
Of all the ethical and practical challenges we face in an AI-powered future, this might seem like a fairly peripheral thing to worry about (although I can assure you, inherent anti-female bias is of absolutely central importance to every woman). It highlights, however, an issue that affects pretty much everyone who isn’t a white man from the Global North: inherent biases that ultimately stem from AI’s representation problem.
The good news is that things are changing fast. Women are increasingly represented at every level of AI and web3, including as founders and CEOs. So let’s go in search of the next generation of female tech talent – and what better place to start than in Africa?
Source:Forbes
