Female AI agents ‘paid’ less than males, study finds

A new study from the University of Limerick has found that gender bias in the workplace may extend to artificial intelligence assistants. In a virtual reality office experiment involving 189 participants, researchers observed that human participants paid male-presenting AI agents more than female-presenting ones for completing the same work. The AI assistants, named Johan and Johanna, used identical underlying technology, yet the female agent was paid roughly 10 percent less and was also perceived as less human-like than her male counterpart.

Dr Mary Hausfeld, co-author of the study, noted that the technology behind the AI agents was exactly the same, but people did not treat them equally. She emphasized that while AI is often thought of as neutral, its design and presentation can activate the same assumptions and biases that exist in human interactions. The findings mirror real-world gender pay gaps; according to the Office of National Statistics, the UK gender pay gap for median hourly earnings was 6.9 percent last year, narrowing to 1–2 percent when accounting for similar roles, skills, and experience.

The study comes as AI agents are rapidly adopted in workplaces, with nearly 80 percent of companies using them in 2026 according to IT consulting firm Accelirate. Dr Hausfeld warned that as AI agents become more common, careful consideration must be given to the characteristics they are given and the behaviors those choices may encourage, to avoid inadvertently reproducing existing inequalities in a new technological setting. The research, titled ‘Human-like and male? How AI assistant design relates to trust and monetary reward at work in VR’, will be presented at the 14th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Vaasa, Finland.

(Source：The Independent)