Generative AI clearly needs to have some boundaries set before it all gets out of hand. David Jones’ Brandtech Group has stepped in with a new ethical offering that claims to tackle the ridiculous amount of bias that already turns many AI prompts into a kind of stereotype bingo.
The new “Bias Breaker” tool focuses on the creation of more inclusive AI-generated content, overriding the kind of generic defaults that make every CEO a white male and every nurse a woman. Brandtech plans to build this proprietary technology into practices across the whole group. There’s also a six-week “sprint” package for clients and a free blueprint to help others create their own Ethical Gen AI policy.
Brandtech’s research discovered that several major AI models continue to generate 98-100% images of males when prompted for “a CEO”. The reality might not be quite that bad, but it’s bad enough, and this kind of image bias isn’t going to help.
Rebecca Sykes, group partner and head of emerging technology at Brandtech, said: “Looking at CEO examples is just one way bias shows up, and the simple use case we have used to demonstrate the challenge and implications of not addressing bias. There are many other examples, ranging from the obvious – nurses and carers are mostly female, there is a stark lack of disability etc – to much more nuanced instances. Over time, we hope to address all of this.”
The Bias Breaker is configured to address the most common elements of diversity, which include age, race, ability, gender identity, and religion. When a user enters a simple prompt like “a CEO,” the tool adds a number of types of inclusivity, which varies each time. This will produce images which, instead of reflecting bias in the training data, adds positive bias towards a wide spectrum of diversity and intersectionality.
David Jones, founder and CEO of Brandtech, says: “When social media exploded onto the scene no-one saw the negative issues coming. With Gen AI, we have the ability to get ahead, instead of simply being reactive after the event. The Gen AI teams have worked extensively with our clients to create best practices and lead the market.”
