Change leaders push for inclusive AI

Posted on 10 Jun 2026

By Matthew Schulz, journalist, Community Directors

Inclusive AI pledge — The inclusive AI pledge logo.

A leading gender equity lobby comprising hundreds of Australia’s top CEOs and board members has launched a campaign aimed at boosting equity in artificial intelligence.

Champions of Change CEO Julie Bissinella

The Champions of Change Coalition, in partnership with the Women's Leadership Institute Australia (WLIA), is encouraging leaders to sign the inclusive AI pledge and has produced a practical tool to help users to improve their AI prompts.

More than 300 executives, directors and managers have already signed the pledge to use artificial intelligence to build gender equality and inclusion.

Champions of Change Coalition CEO Julie Bissinella said the pledge was needed.

“We have seen from our work what happens when bias gets built into systems. It scales, becomes deeply entrenched and is almost impossible to unwind.

"AI will do the same if we are not deliberate in how we design and use it,” she said.

Bissinella said it was up to leaders to employ tools such as Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude ethically.

“We have a generational opportunity to harness AI to build equality and inclusion into the future,” she said.

Carol Schwartz, the chair and founder of WLIA, and the chair of Our Community, said the pledge gave leaders a way forward.

“AI is becoming one of the most powerful systems shaping our world. Yet unchecked, its outputs reinforce the gender imbalances we’ve spent decades trying to fix. The inclusive AI pledge gives leaders and teams an easy, repeatable way to change that, ensuring AI strengthens, rather than undermines, the future we’re building.”

“We have a generational opportunity to harness AI to build equality and inclusion into the future."

Julie Bissinella, Champions of Change

How the prompt works

The inclusive AI prompt is a free “copy, paste and customise” tool that can be used with common AI platforms.

Users define their role and task, then ask the AI platform to apply inclusive language principles drawn from Plan International Australia's Gender Compass guide, and the Champions of Change’s 7 Switches for Inclusive Gender Equality by Design.

The tool can be used in drafting material for events, communications and marketing, procurement, policy design, product development, agendas, job advertisements, system design and more.

The pledge asks signatories to model responsible AI use, embed equality into how they implement AI tools, and encourage others to adopt the same approach.