Creative agency 21N78E Creative Labs has introduced UnbAIsed, a gender-neutral artificial intelligence (AI) image library aimed at addressing bias in AI-generated visuals. Launched around International Women’s Day, the initiative seeks to build a freely accessible archive of images that depict people across professions and everyday roles without relying on traditional gender stereotypes.
The project has been designed as an open and collaborative effort. Students, creators and brands across the country are invited to contribute gender-neutral AI-generated images with clear tagging to help expand the repository. The aim is to introduce more diverse visual references into the datasets that AI systems rely on when generating images.
AI is often perceived as a neutral system that simply processes information and generates responses. However, AI does not create knowledge in isolation. It learns from the Internet, which reflects human history, culture and, at times, long-standing biases. Researchers and technologists have increasingly pointed out that generative AI systems can unintentionally mirror stereotypes embedded in the data they are trained on.
As generative image tools become more widely used, these patterns can appear in their outputs. For instance, prompts such as “generate an image of a nurse” often return images of women, while prompts for a CEO frequently produce images of men. Such outcomes demonstrate how historical patterns can be carried forward into new technologies.
For those in advertising and creative industries, this raises particular concerns. Agencies not only communicate brand messages but also contribute to the visual culture that shapes public perception.
“Even though we were aware of the bias, our understanding of it took a sharp turn when we saw its extent in image generation. That’s when we realised the impact of what we had thought of was far wider. From that moment onwards, it became our sole mission to kickstart this initiative,” said Neeraj Rajeev, Senior Copywriter at 21N78E Creative Labs.
“At 21N78E, we’ve always believed that technology should be a mirror of our progress, not our prejudices. AI is an incredible tool, but it lacks the lived experience to know when it’s repeating an old mistake. With UnbAIsed, we aren’t just building a library; we’re attempting to give AI a better set of memories to learn from. It’s our way of ensuring that the digital future remains as diverse and nuanced as the real world we live in,” said Sudhir Nair, Founder and CEO, 21N78E Creative Labs.
According to the team, the initiative also aims to influence the datasets used to train future AI models. Most image-generation systems rely on large collections of images gathered from the Internet. The roles, patterns and representations within those datasets shape how AI visualises the world.
“The challenge with generative AI isn’t just the output; it’s the data loops that reinforce it. By building UnbAIsed, we’re moving from passive users to active contributors in the model-training ecosystem. We’ve utilised Gemini for the architecture and OSS generation models to seed the library, but the goal is to create a cleaner, more diverse dataset that ‘un-teaches’ the systemic biases found in older, unrefined crawls. It’s about leveraging the right tech stack to ensure the visual intelligence of tomorrow is built on a more accurate representation of today,” said Nikhil Shahane, COO, 21N78E Creative Labs.
By making the archive open and free to use, the initiative hopes to gradually reshape how AI interprets prompts. If such images circulate widely and become part of future training datasets, they could influence how the next generation of AI models represents people and professions.
“As creators, we use images to build worlds, but if our AI tools only show us a world of the past, we’re limited in what we can imagine for the future. UnbAIsed is our way of adding more inclusive, honest colors to that digital palette. It’s about ensuring that when we look into the AI mirror, we see a reflection that is as diverse and nuanced as the reality we live in every day,” added Viren Mahendra, National Creative Director, 21N78E Creative Labs.
The initiative rests on a simple premise: If AI systems learn from human-created data, improving that data is a shared responsibility. Through collective contributions and curated visual references, UnbAIsed aims to help shape a more balanced representation of people in AI-generated imagery.
