This is your last week to get entries in for the Women Leading Tech Awards, presented by Atlassian!
These awards matter more than ever—technology is reshaping the world as we know it and it’s imperative that women have a seat at the table and help shape where the future is headed.
If you need help or inspiration to craft your entry, look no further than our one-stop homepage here!
AI has taken the world by storm–and some actors aren’t playing with goodwill. Take X’s AI tool Grok, which has come under scrutiny across the globe for allowing users to create sexualised images of women and children.
Following government inquests and bans in Southeast Asia, the app removed the undressing feature for the vast majority of users, though paying subscribers are still able to use the feature. It points to a growing concern whereby technology is moving faster than regulation can keep up with.
Grassroots campaigning movement Collective Shout has launched a global campaign calling on Apple and Google Play stores to remove Grok until it disables the nudifying feature, which was used on three of its team.
Movement director Melinda Tankard Reist said Musk’s response was inadequate.
“Grok is a digital weapon of abuse, creating new forms of online sexual assault. The AI tool makes it easy to degrade, debase, harass and intimidate women,” she said.
“Musk said deepfake Grok-enabled images would be investigated and removed where there were laws against them. This leaves millions of women and girls in most parts of the world vulnerable for harvesting for deepfake explicit content.
“Women portrayed sexually in honour cultures could be killed”.
More than 1,000 people have so far used the group’s action button to send emails to app store executives including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
“Grok must be removed immediately before even more women and children are traumatised,” Reist said.
Women make up only 22 per cent of AI professionals globally — their absence from tables means technologies are designed with narrower perspectives in mind.
The Women Leading Tech Awards, presented by Atlassian, wants to see that change. Late entries close this Friday, and we encourage all women in tech to step up and join the conversation!
In 2024, AI voice assistants worldwide surpassed 8 billion, more than one per person on the planet. These assistants are helpful and polite and nearly always default to female-identifying.
Some experts have pointed out that this design choice reinforces existing stereotypes about the roles women and men play in society.
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Development Policy and Practice found up to 50 per cent of human-machine exchanges were verbally abusive.
Another study from 2020, published in the Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, placed the figure between 10 per cent and 44 per cent, with conversations often containing sexually explicit language.
A 2023 experiment published in the International Review of Social Psychology showed 18 per cent of user interactions with a female agent focused on sex, compared to 10 per cent for a male embodiment and just 2 per cent for a non-gendered robot.
Microsoft’s Tay chatbot, released on X during its testing phase in 2016, lasted just 16 hours before users trained it to spew racist and misogynistic slurs.
Regulation is struggling to keep pace with the growth of this problem.
The time to shape the future is now! Late entries for the Women Leading Tech Awards, presented by Atlassian close this Friday, 6 February – enter now!
Most jurisdictions have no rules addressing gender stereotyping in AI design or its consequences. Where regulations exist, they prioritise transparency and accountability, overshadowing concerns about gender bias.
In Australia, the government has signalled it will rely on existing frameworks rather than design AI-specific rules.
This regulatory gap has the potential to allow misogyny to thrive within the digital infrastructure that is becoming part of everyday life.
But not all AI assistant technologies are harmful. They can foster education and advance women’s rights. Last year’s Woman of the Year Marika Conomos, for instance, harnessed AI to help therapists manage workloads and better treat patients.
The challenge is striking a balance: fostering innovation while ensuring parameters are set, encouraging safe digital environments.
AI is shaping a new world, and regulation alone is not enough. Education and work in the tech industry is imperative to shape a positive world, and women need to be part of the story.
