She searched her own name. It didn’t appear.
She searched her own face. It didn’t register.
She searched her own voice. It was flagged as “aggressive.”
She searched her own story. It was buried beneath sponsored lies.
In March 2024, a Nairobi-based researcher discovered that Google’s autocomplete suppressed the names of Black Kenyan women activists unless paired with words like “controversy” or “arrest.”
Facial recognition software failed to detect dark-skinned women unless they wore light makeup or stood in front of white walls.
AI-generated avatars of Black women flooded TikTok and Instagram—created by white developers, monetized by corporations, and programmed to mimic stereotypes.
Meanwhile, real Black women were shadowbanned, demonetized, and flagged for “violating community guidelines.”
Shudu, the world’s first AI supermodel, was created by a white British man. Her beauty was celebrated. Her ownership was not.
In 2024, AI-generated Black influencers were programmed to eat watermelon and fried chicken on livestreams.
This is not representation. This is digital blackface.
This is not inclusion. This is algorithmic exploitation.
Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, discovered that facial analysis systems from IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon had error rates of 35% for dark-skinned women, compared to 1% for light-skinned men.
These systems failed to correctly classify the faces of Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Serena Williams.
When technology denigrates even our icons, what happens to the rest of us?
Black women in AI are fighting back. Angle Bush founded Black Women in Artificial Intelligence to train and uplift technologists.
Ava Flanigan, a student at Spelman College, is building models that detect bias before it enters the system.
Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls Code to teach girls as young as seven how to build apps, train AI, and rewrite the future.
But Big Tech is still Big Tech. And the algorithm still erases.