MullenLowe MENA has won the Campaign of the Year – Middle East & Africa at the New York Festivals AME Awards for its ‘Fixing the bAIs’ campaign created for Aurora50, a leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) impact agency. The campaign was also honoured with a Gold Tower, two Silver, and a Bronze award.

The campaign was ideated around the objective of highlighting Artificial Intelligence (AI)’s potential to revolutionise our world, while also addressing the challenge that AI is not always intelligent when it comes to gender representation. To break this bias, MullenLowe MENA used AI to fix AI in this campaign.

The winning campaign addressed biased datasets in AI that perpetuate gender stereotypes, which undermines women’s representation and opportunities, and undoes years of workplace progress. Aurora50 developed a databank of inclusive images of women, removing gender metadata to prevent bias.

The campaign contributed to the passage of the EU’s AI Act, the first regulation deeming biased datasets unacceptable, adopted by 52 countries in the European Parliament.

Recognised globally as a benchmark for tackling gender bias in AI, the campaign received praise from institutions like Ceimia and Mila and set a world record for the most pledges received for a gender equality workplace initiative in 24 hours.