AIOASM 2024: Call for Proposals

Gender Equality, Generative AI & Culture

Context and Areas of Focus

The rapid development and deployment of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies have accelerated in recent years, transforming various sectors (healthcare, finance, education, etc.). The arts and cultural sector, however, remains fundamental to democratic societies. It holds a role as important as independent media, making GenAI’s impact on artists and cultural workers a particularly critical area to monitor. Thus, artists and cultural workers rights have never been more important to fight for. Simultaneously, concerns about gender equity, bias in AI as well as mis/representation in AI systems design have grown. Better understanding the risks of  gendered cultural erasure is paramount to the development of assessment frameworks of the impacts of Generative AI. 

Research has shown that GenAI systems amplify societal biases, leading to biased portrayals of women and racialized persons in AI-generated outputs and resulting in real life discrimination and even violence. For instance, a study analyzing images generated by popular AI tools found significant gender and racial biases, with women and/or Black individuals being underrepresented in occupational portraits. What we don’t know is how is this impacting women’s interest in using AI as an art tool? How does the use of GenAI impact their economic safety (either by mass use of GenAI by others threatening women artists' economic freedom because genAi borrows/steals from artists; or by not adopting GenAI tools women are excluded/exclude themselves from a growing market, as well as from using tools that can enhance their productivity and outreach as artists). The project proposes to address these questions, among others.

The women artists navigating this landscape express a mix of skepticism and openness towards integrating AI into their creative processes and most women express a lack of interest in AI. However, the question of what actionable solutions can we adopt to address the root causes of this absence remains to be addressed. Inclusive and sustainable creative economies will best progress through the implementation of intersectional and gender-sensitive-feminist policies; and the role of the arts and culture in society, of women artists and cultural workers must be supported by concrete economic strategies.

To explore these pressing questions, AI Impact Alliance is gathering international experts for a full-day roundtable on the intersection of GenAI, gender, and cultural policy, with a focus on how  emerging technologies impact women artists and cultural workers. We will gather expertise on the implications on cultural policy, security and diplomacy, and solutions on how we can prevent inherent risks (policy recommendations, assessment frameworks). The impact assessment framework, or elements of, we plan to propose will inform public policy and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). 

Our working group will produce guidelines for incorporating gender-sensitive-feminist approaches in national and international AI policies related to arts and culture, or cultural policies as they pertain to AI, thus addressing the complex intersection of gender, race, and socioeconomic equity. Furthermore, artists-fellows from AIIA’s Art-Laws program will take part in the roundtable, firmly grounding our research methods in artistic realities and sector-led perspectives.

Our focus SDGs are SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).

Process 

We will select a maximum of 10 speakers for a roundtable to be held online. Proposals should be submitted through this link, including a 650-word summary of your proposed intervention, your affiliation, and research interests. If you wish to submit a paper in addition to your abstract (not required), you will be requested to send it to the conference organizers up to one week before the workshop, so that we can make it available to the participants.

When and where: The workshop will take place over a full day on Wednesday, November 27th, 2024 online, Montreal time (ET). 

Chairing Committee 

Convenor and lead chair Valentine Goddard, founder of AI Impact Alliance, embraces a multidisciplinary approach, combining her legal background, artistic pursuits, and focus on AI ethics and governance. She uses art to explore the transversal policy and legal implications of AI and champions the role of art in understanding and shaping AI's societal impacts. She is currently leading the Art, AI, Law and Society Resource Cluster which includes the Art-Laws grants for artists program with support from the Council for the Arts of Canada.

Jane Ezirigwe is an Associate Professor of Law at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) and the Gordon F. Henderson Fellow at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC) of the University of Ottawa. Jane uses gender and racial justice lenses to conduct research on data governance, human rights, and development.

Sarah Moritz environmental anthropologist and director of the Storytelling, Ethnography & Action Lab (SEAL) at Thompson Rivers University. Her research focuses on Indigenous relational ecologies, territories of life, and matriarchal oral history, particularly in Salish and Arctic regions and emphasizes decolonial and intersectional approaches. 

Caroline Jonnaert holds a PhD in copyright law and copyright from Université de Montréal. She is a lawyer and partner at ROBIC, a law firm specialized in intellectual property law. Caroline is interested in the interaction between the cultural sector and generative AI from a legal perspective. Author of “Intelligence artificielle et droit d’auteur, le dilemme canadien”, éditions Yvon Blais, 2024.

Pierre Tircher holds a doctorate in industrial relations from the University of Montréal where is also a researcher and lecturer. His expertise lies in the analysis of public policies. Using quantitative methods, he studies their differentiated effects on population sub-groups in order to highlight the inequalities that these policies can create. 

Mariangela Mihai is a multimodal researcher and storyteller working at the intersection of transmedia, emergent technologies, and society. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Cornell, served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Media & Film at Georgetown, and is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology & WGSS at Western Washington University. She is co-founder of Ethnocine, a collective of women of color and queer filmmakers pushing the boundaries of documentary storytelling through a decolonial & intersectional feminist practice.

Sébastien Gambs holds the Canada Research Chair in Privacy-preserving and Ethical Analysis of Big Data and is a professor in the Computer Science department of UQAM. He is interested in solving long-term scientific questions such as addressing the tension between privacy and the analysis of Big Data as well as the fairness, accountability and transparency issues raised by machine learning models and personalized systems.

Mercy Atieno Odongo is the Deputy Chief of Staff at Kenya's Ministry of Foreign & Diaspora Affairs and a PhD candidate at the United States International University. A Harvard Kennedy School Edward Mason Fellow and Obama Foundation Africa Emerging Leader, she founded the Adaptive Leadership Foundation. Mercy champions transformational leadership and has trained over 140 emerging leaders across Africa, focusing on diplomacy, sustainable development, and adaptive leadership strategies.

Subject Areas for Contributions

We welcome contributions from diverse subject areas and regional backgrounds, including but not limited to arts and culture, economics, law, policy & governance, diplomacy, gender studies, technology & innovation, AI ethics, Indigenous studies, and cultural policy. One of the key objectives is to bring together a workgroup interested in developing a solid framework to assess the impact of Generative AI on culture with a specific focus on the gendered impact of Generative AI. 

We are looking for:

  1. Research works (including community-based action-research, art-based research, and civil society organization-led research) adopting intersectional, gender-focused, Indigenous, and/or regional perspectives on GenAI in arts and culture.

  2. Projects examining the gendered dynamics and implications of GenAI for cultural representation and for non-profit arts and cultural organizations and art service organizations.

  3. Papers or presentations on the economic and legal risks of underrepresentation of women in AI-generated art and cultural production. Given that we are at a time in history where new bodies of law are emerging, this also includes papers that look into how we can shape emerging laws and policies on AI and GenAI to better achieve SDGs, Truth and Reconciliation and the 94 Calls to Action; reinforce the respect of human rights, cultural, Indigenous and economic rights; support peace building.

  4. Proposals for applied AI projects or AI governance frameworks designed to improve outcomes related to the above-mentioned issues.

  5. Presentations on the economic impacts of GenAI on women artists and cultural workers.

  6. Proposals for impact assessment models to mitigate bias in AI-generated art and cultural content.

  7. Strategies for integrating intersectional feminist AI principles into international cultural policy, security and diplomacy frameworks.

  8. Proposals of applied AI projects or AI and Data governance (policies, standards, norms) designed with the intent to improve gender equality in the arts and cultural sector.

  9. Papers or presentations on the cultural security risks to the underrepresentation of women artists and cultural leaders in AI governance (gendered cultural erasure).

  10. Papers or presentations that explore new governance models for gender data in arts and cultural funding including the role of cultural data collaboratives.

Deadline

Submissions should be received by November 15th, 2024, for full consideration.

Expected results 

A day-long roundtable, a final report including policy recommendation and a draft of a gender-sensitive assessment framework on the impacts of Generative AI. Co-chairs as well as authors of some selected accepted papers will be included as co-authors in the final report (to be determined by the chairing committee following the presentations). Results will be presented at our annual summit in March(date to be determined) and we hope to submit to instances such as but not limited to UNESCO, The International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (IFCCD) and International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). It will also be included in our report to the Council for the Arts of Canada.

Background reading


Click here to apply or visit AI Impact Alliance’s website in the Programs section.

Please contact v.goddard@allianceimpact.org if you’re interested in sponsoring the conference during which the results will be presented.