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The warning comes as recent research shows that as generative AI becomes part of billions of people’s daily lives – from creating emails to planning campaigns and creating presentations – inequalities are also amplified through discriminatory algorithms.
In the UK alone, 88 percent of advertising and media agencies are already using this technology in some form.
Ahead of the UN Global Dialogue on the Governance of Artificial Intelligence and the Global Summit on AI for Good in Geneva in early July, UN Women urges governments, companies and developers to ensure gender equality is included in the design, implementation and governance of AI systems.
Gender and racial bias
Evidence shows that this problem is widespread. A study of 133 AI systems found that 44 percent showed gender bias, while more than a quarter showed gender and racial bias.
Big language models have repeatedly linked women to home, family, and childcare, and linked men to business success, leadership, and careers. In some cases, AI systems have generated responses that depict women as sexual objects or subordinates to men.
According to UN Women, when researchers asked large language models to complete sentences starting with a person’s gender, about one in five responses were sexist or misogynistic.
Some even depict women as property, as objects.
Not a design flaw
These results, experts say, are not random errors or glitches in AI, but rather a pattern documented across systems on a large scale.
This is a predictable result of AI systems trained over decades due to the unequal representation of women and men, UN Women noted.
Talk to UN NewsJayathma Wickramanayake, UN Women Lead for Digital Technology, explained that the AI model “draws bias from decades of texts written by humans, about humans, in a world where women are lumped in the categories of home and family, and men are lumped in the categories of business and career.”
For Ms Wickramanayake, what is most worrying is that this is not a design flaw – “but a real policy gap that has been left wide open”.
Of the 138 countries assessed worldwide, only 24 countries mentioned gender in their national AI strategies, and only 18 countries included substantive gender-responsive measures.
For UN Women digital experts, these are not mistakes waiting to be fixed in the next update, “these are choices we make over and over again in training data, in design spaces, in policy documents that half the population doesn’t know about”.
Online dangers are increasing
For many women and girls, the risks exceed existing stereotypes. Women already face disproportionate rates of harassment online, and AI makes some forms of violence easier to create and spread.
Listen to an interview with a UN Women expert on the rise of the online influencer “manosphere”:
According to UN Women Datanearly one in four female human rights defenders, activists and journalists surveyed reported experiencing AI-assisted online violence. Twelve percent said private images had been shared without their consent, while six percent reported being subjected to deepfakes or manipulated images and videos.
As AI-generated content becomes commonplace, concerns are growing that image-based harassment, manipulation and abuse will become increasingly difficult to detect and prevent.
Missing from the table
At the same time, women remain underrepresented in the technology development industry, raising concerns that the future of artificial intelligence is being built without their perspectives reflected in the blueprint.
Although AI is expected to drive growth in technology-focused sectors, women only account for 30 percent of the global sector AI workforceInternational Labor Organization (ILO) said.
UN Women warns that the people building these systems do not adequately reflect the diversity of the populations they seek to serve.
Without greater participation from women and other underrepresented groups, the organization says, existing biases risk being embedded in future technologies.
Economic disruption falls hardest on women
The economic impact of AI will also likely be reduced unevenly. Compared to men, women are almost twice as likely to have jobs that face a high risk of automation outside the AI sector. The impact can be exacerbated by other factors, including race, disability, income, and geography.
As AI transforms the labor market, UN Women warns that communities already facing exclusion may be left even further behind if there is no targeted action.
The business case for inclusion
According to UN Women, tackling bias is not just a rights issue – it also makes commercial sense.
Research by the Stereotype Alliance, an initiative organized by the United Nations for Women, found that advertising free from gender stereotypes delivered stronger business results. As a result, brands that use inclusive advertising see higher sales growth, greater customer loyalty and stronger pricing power than competitors.
As AI increasingly shapes marketing and content creation, organizations that incorporate inclusion into their AI processes are likely to benefit, while organizations that fail to do so will face reputational and commercial risks.
The Unstereotype Alliance playbook launches in June 2026 gives marketers a way to catch bias before launch, every time they use generative AI.
A choice that determines the future
UN Women emphasizes that if developed responsibly, artificial intelligence can help identify stereotypes, expand representation and increase accessibility. But whether these benefits are realized will depend on who is involved in establishing the system, and whose experiences are reflected in the design of the system.
UN Women calls for gender equality – and the rights and experiences of women and girls – to be integrated at every stage of the AI lifecycle, from development to implementation and governance.
When governments, technology companies and international organizations gather in Geneva next month, the message is clear: if women and girls are excluded from building the future of AI, then the disparities of the past risk being carried over into the technologies of the future.
UN Women emphasizes that if designed safely and used purposefully, AI can have impacts opposite to the harms currently widely documented. These systems can detect stereotypes rather than reproduce them, broaden representation rather than narrow it, and increase accessibility on a scale often overlooked by current systems.
