2025 Women in AI Expert Series - Responsible AI in Action: A Look Back at a Winning Hackathon Project

Principal author: Karen Jensen

Welcome back to the 2025 Expert Series from the Global Ethics and Culture Office of Women in AI.

In 2025, we continue our global initiatives in Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Research to make AI accessible and inclusive for everyone, with a special focus on women and girls.

Like the 2024 Speaker Series, this year's Expert Series aims to boost opportunities for women and girls in AI. We'll feature global women experts sharing practical AI skills that could help you launch a new AI career or reskill for AI roles.

In our first session, titled "Prompt Like a Pro: AI Skills for Students and Young Professionals," our expert, Charlotte Tao, offered practical guidance on the essential skill of prompt engineering.

In our second session, titled “Agentic AI: Navigating Autonomy, Accountability, and Ethics,” our expert, Dhivya Nagasubramanian, offered clear metrics and understanding of Agentic AI and how it differs from Generative AI and its uses.

In this session, we‘re excited to revisit members of the winning team, GardAI, from our 2023 Hackathon event. Teams at this hackathon were challenged to build solutions using AI tools to solve gender-based bias in three categories: Equal Distribution of Power and Influence, Equal Distribution of Housework and Unpaid Care, and Gender-Based Violence. By reconnecting with these experts, we gain vital insights into the real-world impact of our work and uncover crucial lessons that will shape our future initiatives.

Our experts for today are Eteri Plieva and Alina Kanstantsinava.  Alina is an experienced Product Manager with six years in IT, specializing in AI & Data and SaaS solutions across diverse sectors, with significant expertise in building products from concept to scale. Eteri is also a Product Manager who builds scalable, user-centric products, with a strong focus on monetization and growth across B2B and B2C domains, specializing in data-driven decisions with empathy for users.

Eteri and Alina worked with other team members on a groundbreaking project, GardAI, an AI tool designed to combat gender-based violence online.

Our host for this session is Dr. Ja’Nya Jenoch, Senior Project Manager for our Global WAI team and a key leader in our Hackathon.

Our discussion started with Eteri and Alina sharing insights into their innovative 2023 Hackathon project. They discussed the proliferation of pornographic images targeting women, which accompanied the surge of Generative AI in 2023. Their content detection tool aimed to identify and label AI-generated material in its early stages, thereby mitigating the significant harm caused by such content. Once content is posted on the Internet, it becomes very difficult to track and remove, so their tool represented an innovative approach to prevention.

The Genesis of an AI Image Detection System We also delved into their team's approach during the hackathon. Eteri and Alina detailed their system's two-step architecture: a sophisticated pattern detection mechanism combined with a blend of models analyzing intricate details like lip syncing and eye movement. Their rigorous research process, executed within a tight 48-hour window, encompassed extensive brainstorming, technical feasibility studies, expert consultations, market analysis, data science work, competitive research, and the development of a financial model, culminating in a robust proof of concept. The team continued to explore the tool's potential for broader real-life applications, post-hackathon.

Navigating the Journey: From Hackathon Success to Real-World Challenges Reflecting on their experience, Eteri and Alina recounted winning the hackathon two years ago with their four-member team, including a specialized ML engineer. They continued to advance the project for several months post-hackathon, even expanding their team. Despite recognizing vast potential applications across sectors like insurance and banking, the project ultimately faced a formidable challenge: securing financial support and venture capital. (This challenge isn’t just hype. The Founders Forum Group recently reported that of the $289 billion invested globally in 2024, only 2.3% of that funding went to female only founding teams (Founders Forum Group, 2025).)

Eteri candidly suggested that a future endeavor would prioritize bootstrapping and seeking support from smaller angel investors, underscoring that visibility is paramount for early-stage startups seeking capital. They acknowledged that while industry giants like Hype and Google DeepMind are also tackling similar issues, the dynamic evolution of AI means the challenge of detecting AI-generated content remains ongoing.

Enhancing AI Accuracy and Championing Ethical Development The conversation naturally progressed to the inherent challenges and critical ethical considerations in developing AI applications. Eteri highlighted a common real-world discrepancy: their product's impressive 80% detection rate in testing dropped to 65% in live scenarios, emphasizing the crucial need for higher accuracy in deployed systems. They outlined plans to leverage a Google Extension and API approach to enhance model performance and expand their training data to keep up with evolving changes in AI.

Evolving Perspectives on Ethical AI Finally, Eteri and Alina shared how their perspectives on ethical AI have evolved since their hackathon experience. Eteri expressed a heightened concern regarding AI's pervasive impact on daily life and the potential risks for users who may not fully grasp its limitations.

Alina noted a significantly increased awareness of ethical AI issues in her own ecosystem(s), and powerfully advocated for the indispensable role of data governance managers and ethical AI staff within organizations, observing that many companies, particularly startups, are not yet fully aware of evolving AI standards and regulations.

Final Thoughts

Their advice for aspiring women and girls in AI resonated deeply: Eteri encouraged caution, humility, and keeping a positive outlook about outcomes, while Alina recommended bravery, experimentation, and proactive engagement in addressing the complex ethical challenges posed by AI.

Share your comments here on this post and with us on Social Media @WomeninAI to ensure we #MakeitFAIR!

Event recording

You can view the recording of the event using this link.

This Expert Series is presented by the Women in AI Ethics & Culture Office volunteer team, dedicated to A Global Vision for achieving gender parity in emerging technologies through increasing Opportunity, championing inclusive Policies, and fostering practical Action that delivers meaningful and measurable impact.

Ethics & Culture Team

Please see the links below to our Team’s profiles on LinkedIn.

•  Karen Jensen 

• Damita Snow 

•  Bhuva Shakti 

• Ja’Nya Jenoch

• Charlotte Tao

• Zuhra Matkurbanova

• Dhivya Nagasubramanian

• Xiao Zheng

• Vanessa Maidoh

Reference:

(n.d.). Women Funding Statistics 2025. Ff.co. Retrieved July 3, 2025, from https://ff.co/women-funding-statistics-2025/