Joy Buolamwini

Facial recognition software used to misidentify dark-skinned women 47% of the time. Until Joy Buolamwini forced Big Tech to fix it.

In 2015, Joy Buolamwini was building an art project at the MIT Media Lab.

It was supposed to use facial recognition to project the face of an inspiring figure onto the user’s reflection.

But the software couldn’t detect her face.

Joy is a dark-skinned woman.

And to be seen by the system, she had to put on a white mask.

She wondered: Why?

She launched Gender Shades, a research project that audited commercial facial recognition systems from IBM, Microsoft, and Face++.

The systems could identify lighter-skinned men with 99.2% accuracy.

But for darker-skinned women, the error rate jumped as high as 47%.

The problem?

AI was being trained on biased datasets: over 75% male, 80% lighter-skinned.

So Joy introduced the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark, a new training dataset with diverse representation by gender and skin tone.

It became a model for how to test facial recognition fairly.

Her research prompted Microsoft and IBM to revise their algorithms.

Amazon tried to discredit her work.

But she kept going.

In 2016, she founded the Algorithmic Justice League, a nonprofit dedicated to challenging bias in AI through research, advocacy, and art.

She called it the Coded Gaze, the embedded bias of the people behind the code.

Her spoken-word film “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?”, which shows facial recognition software misidentifying icons like Oprah and Michelle Obama, has been screened around the world.

And her work was featured in the award-winning documentary Coded Bias, now on Netflix.

In 2019, she testified before Congress about the dangers of facial recognition.

She warned that even if accuracy improves, the tech can still be abused.

For surveillance, racial profiling, and discrimination in hiring, housing, and criminal justice.

To counter it, she co-founded the Safe Face Pledge, which demands ethical boundaries for facial recognition.

No weaponization. No use by law enforcement without oversight.

After years of activism, major players (including IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon) paused facial recognition sales to law enforcement.

In 2023, she published her best-selling book “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines.”

She advocated for inclusive datasets, independent audits, and laws that protect marginalized communities.

She consulted with the White House ahead of Executive Order 14110 on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI.”

But she didn’t stop at facial recognition.

She launched Voicing Erasure, a project exposing bias in voice AI systems like Siri and Alexa.

Especially their failure to recognize African-American Vernacular English.

Her message is clear: AI doesn’t just reflect society.

It amplifies its flaws.

Fortune calls her “the conscience of the AI revolution.”