Mahindra has already "fired" its AI ambassador

The initial post introducing ‘her’ – it – read as follows:

“Meet @avabeyondreality, our Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ambassador!

She’s our go-to Sustainable Tech Champ, navigating the cutting edge of innovation to create positive change.

Plus, she’s passionate about @fiaformulae and is here to share some exciting BTS content from the championship over the season.”

Her (its) first post was four weeks ago, self-introducing as an influencer here to “shake things up”, asking for questions in the comments to which it can respond. It’s posted 11 times since then with the usual cookie-cutter influencer poses and formula. Quite why it’s posting about having a good night’s sleep though, is beyond us…

‘Her’ appointment as an ‘employee’ of Mahindra’s caused quite the ruckus however, particularly given Ava’s is a role many highly talented, qualified, hard-working humans could perform. There’s also a lot of commentary alluding to motorsport’s patchy reputation around representation and equal opportunities.

Indeed, one commenter said “motorsport companies/teams will do anything but hire actual women”, and another said “or you could have hired one of the many talented women in the Motorsport space”.