Includes “Bias Breaker” tech tackling bias in Gen AI images

The Brandtech Group is leading the marketing industry by unveiling a raft of initiatives to promote and set boundaries for the ethical use of generative AI. These include a blueprint for creating an ethical Gen AI policy, and proprietary technology that tackles bias in foundation models called “Bias Breaker.”

The package represents Brandtech’s commitment to delivering Gen AI responsibly and ethically across three key areas: the teams it hires, promotes and trains, the tech it builds, and the services it offers. It also reflects the deep experience the company has had in delivering scaled Gen AI services to clients since 2018, enabling it to lead the industry in this area.

Brandtech Group Partner and Head of Emerging Technology Rebecca Sykes says: “As very early adopters, we have a responsibility to lead. We believe all companies that use Gen AI should commit to what they will and won’t use it for, and be transparent about this. We are committed to being an active participant in shaping a more responsible and ethical future of AI in marketing and advertising.”

After more than a year of development, Brandtech’s Bias Breaker is now live and integrated with Pencil, the industry’s #1 Generative AI marketing platform, which is owned by Brandtech and has already created more than 1 million ads for 5,000+ brands since it came to market in 2018, with $1BN media spend that has passed through it enabling it to also make performance predictions.

Brandtech’s own research, in just one example of the many kinds of bias type, discovered that several major foundation models continue to generate 98-100% images of males when prompted for “a CEO”, with the majority over-indexing for male (or male appearing) CEOs versus reality.

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The research showed significant bias. Two of the models showed 100 percent male-appearing images in 100 generations when prompted for an image of a CEO. While another was 98 percent male, and two others offered male CEOs 86 percent and 85 percent of the time, the figure in reality is better – although far from equal. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace study last year identified that 28 percent  of C-suite roles were held by women and 10.4 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were female.

The proprietary Bias Breaker technology adds a layer of probability-backed inclusivity to prompts. Brandtech configured several of the most common elements of diversity, which, in this iteration of Bias Breaker, include age, race, ability, gender identity, and religion. So, when a user enters a simple prompt – e.g. “a CEO”,  the tool adds a number of types of inclusivity, which will vary each time, creating a more sophisticated prompt to use in any image generation model. This will produce images which, instead of being reflective of bias in the training data, add positive bias towards a wide spectrum of diversity and intersectionality that current models simply do not provide for.

Oliver US Managing Partner and InKroud Founder, Tyra Jones-Hurst, says: “The answer to this problem of bias in Gen AI is far from set in stone but one thing’s for certain – brands and advertisers cannot simply accept bias as the status quo. One way to address it is to prioritize inclusion through creating automated features where they don’t already exist, and integrate them to build on top of foundation model use. This is what we have done with Bias Breaker.”

Rebecca Sykes adds: “Looking at CEO examples is just one way bias shows up, and the simple use case we have used to demonstrate the challenge and implications of not addressing bias. There are many other examples, ranging from the obvious – nurses and carers are mostly female, there is a stark lack of disability etc – to much more nuanced instances. Over time, we hope to address all of this.”

Brandtech’s Ethical Gen AI package also includes a number of practical measures, including the release of a blueprint to help anyone create an Ethical Gen AI policy, which incorporates the Group’s extensive learnings across this discipline and is available, free, to anyone. The Group aims to go beyond compliance with any statutory regulations.

All Brandtech client-facing teams have been given training and a discussion guide on how to assist a client through an ethical decision-making process for Gen AI. Additionally, Brandtech Consulting, the Group’s high-level strategic offer, and InKroud (the multi-cultural consultancy that is part of Oliver) can offer 6-week Gen AI Ethical Sprints to clients.

Brandtech has found that CMOs are increasingly asking questions around ethical usage of Gen AI  as they move from pilots to scaled deployment and the Ethical Gen AI Package, including Bias Breaker, directly answers those questions.

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David Jones, founder and CEO of Brandtech, says: “When social media exploded onto the scene no-one saw the negative issues coming. With Gen AI, we have the ability to get ahead, instead of simply being reactive after the event. Bekki, Tyra and the Gen AI teams have worked extensively with our clients to create best practices and lead the market.”

The Brandtech Group is the world’s #1 digital-only marketing group and the leading global generative AI marketing company. It was founded in June 2015 (as You & Mr Jones) by former Havas Global CEO David Jones, with the simple mission to help brands do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using technology. It was renamed The Brandtech Group in January 2022.

Today it is the largest global digital content partner for many of the world’s biggest brands and companies, often using its unique in-housing model. It works with eight of the world’s top 10 global advertisers and 49 of the world’s top 100. Clients include Google, Microsoft, Unilever, LVMH, Morgan Stanley, Bayer, TikTok, Diageo, Reckitt and Renault-Nissan.

Its most recent acquisition was Pencil, the only generative AI marketing company that is powered by $1BN in media spend across 5,000 brands.It has made more than 1 million ads.Typically, Pencil’s ads are 10x faster, with 2x better performance than a brand’s usual baseline. Working with the Group, Pencil launched a new tool, Pencil Pro, which is specifically designed for major global brands and has an industry-leading approach to brand safety, data ringfencing, IP ownership, copyright protection and other policies.

In addition, the Group invests in cutting-edge marketing technology companies and has been active in the AI, AR and gaming spaces since 2015. The Group was the very first external investor in Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go), alongside other investments such as AI Foundation (2018), Automat (AI chatbots, 2016), Elsy (AI media planning, 2016), Jivox (dynamic automated content, 2016), Crossing Minds (deep learning AI recommendation system, 2017), VidMob (automated content, 2018), CreativeX (AI-driven content optimization, 2022), Zappar (AR, 2017), Provenance (blockchain, 2022) and GGP (the world’s largest gaming fund).

The Group is one of the most prominent marketing industry voices on the prediction and movement to AI-driven marketing, including generative AI. It was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies 2021 by Fast Company, and by CB Insights as one of the World’s Most Valuable Private Unicorns. Pencil was recognized as one of the  World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2024.