Fixing the bAIs.
Aurora50 and MullenLowe MENA used AI image tools to build a free bank of pictures of women in many kinds of jobs, with gender stripped from the tags, to feed better data back into AI.
- Brand
- Aurora50
- Agency
- MullenLowe MENA
- Market
- UAE
- Region
- GCC
- Year
- 2023
The challenge
AI image generators tend to picture professionals as men: Aurora50 cites DALL-E 2 producing images of white men 97% of the time when asked for a CEO or director. The National reported the campaign's point that women are under-represented in the data used to train AI, which leaves the systems biased against them.
The idea
The team used Midjourney, DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion to create a large databank of diverse images of women in many professions, removed gender from their file names, tags and descriptions, and published them royalty-free on fixingthebias.com for anyone to use; the agency's award entry says the site fed them to stock image banks, social media and the open datasets used to train AI. Workshops for young people, summits and a Discord community added more images, according to the agency's award entry. Aurora50 presented the campaign at its Inclusion Summit in Abu Dhabi in November 2023 (The National).
Results
- More than 80,000 images of women created, according to the 2024 Shorty Awards entry
- Nine datasets, including LAION-5B, trained on the images, according to the same entry
- A reach of 4.4 billion and US$4.5 million in earned media, according to the same entry
Case study source: The National Source ↗
Awards
- Cresta Awards 2024The Creative Effectiveness AwardBronze
- Clio Awards 2024Clio Awards / Creative Use of Data / OtherBronze
- Cresta Awards 2023Social Impact – Single EntryGold
- Cresta Awards 2023The #OMG AwardSilver
- Cresta Awards 2023Digital Design – Innovative Use of New TechnologiesBronze
- Cresta Awards 2023The Future – AI Assisted/Generated Creativity and ContentGold
- Cresta Awards 2023Creative Technology – Use of AIBronze
- Cresta Awards 2023Digital Craft – Innovative New TechniquesGold
- Shorty Awards 2024: Gold Honors in Generative AI and Social Activism, and a Bronze Honor in Social Good Campaign
- AME Awards 2024: Campaign of the Year, Middle East and Africa, as reported by Campaign Middle East
- Gerety Awards 2023: Silver in Communication, Work for Good and Innovation, as reported by Campaign Middle East
Credits
- Web development
- Bluamoeba
- PR
- Current Global


