Why AI’s flaws are hurting girls most

AI isn’t leveling the playing field. It’s making it more uneven.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Recently, Grok AI faced criticism after users found it was creating explicit images of real people, including women and children. Although xAI has now implemented some restrictions, this incident revealed a serious weakness. Without safeguards and diverse perspectives, girls and women are put at greater risk. The dangers artificial intelligence poses to women and girls are real and happening now, affecting their mental health, safety, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

Last fall, a mother discovered why her teenage daughter’s mental health had been deteriorating: It was a result of conversations with a Character.AI chatbot. She’s not alone. Aura’s State of Youth Report, released in December, found that parents believe technology has a more negative effect on girls’ emotions, including stress, jealousy, and loneliness—51% compared with 36% for boys. That’s unacceptable, and we need to do better. 

The risks extend beyond mental health. OpenAI recently reported that more than 40 million Americans seek health information on ChatGPT daily. As AI in healthcare expands, the consequences of biased training data can be dangerous. AI models that are trained predominantly on male health data produce worse outcomes for women. For instance, an AI model designed to detect liver disease from blood tests missed 44% of cases in women, compared with 23% in men.

In the workplace, AI is not leveling the playing field. Despite laws prohibiting discrimination, AI-powered hiring tools have repeatedly caused concerns about bias, fairness, and data privacy. A study published by the University of Washington found that in AI resume screenings, the technology favored female-associated names in only 11% of cases. 

These failures reflect who is building our technology. Women make up just 22% of the AI workforce. When systems are designed without women’s perspectives, they replicate existing inequities and introduce new risks. The pattern is clear. AI is failing girls and women.

This could not come at a more pivotal moment in the job market. A quarter of the roles on LinkedIn’s latest list of the 25 fastest-growing jobs in the United States are tech-related, with AI engineers at the top. Decisions about how AI is designed today will shape access to jobs, healthcare, education, and civic life for decades. It is critical that women play an active role in developing new AI tools so that inequity is not baked into the systems that increasingly govern our lives.

Young women are not disengaged with AI. Research conducted last year by Girls Who Code, in partnership with UCLA, found that young women are deeply thoughtful about the dual nature of technology. They see its potential to advance healthcare, expand educational access, and address climate change. They are also aware of its dangers, such as bias, surveillance, and exclusion from development. This isn’t blind optimism. Instead, it offers a perspective that is often missing in today’s AI development.

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