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In collaboration with McCann Canada, travel brand Black & Abroad have launched this powerful AI-driven commerce activation, which puts customers at the centre of a bold new experience while addressing deep technological bias  

Titled See You There, the campaign presents past Black & Abroad travellers with joyous, inspirational images depicting them in exciting places they have yet to visit. The process of developing the work, however, uncovered a darker truth: a world of bias encoded in AI models. 

Outputs from the generative platforms used tended to lighten guests' skin, straighten their hair, and even generate them into scenes of poverty, suggesting that the base generative models used have been trained on incomplete and biased photographic data. They also struggled to generate accurate images of Black & Abroad guests at specific destinations, such as Macchu Pichu in Peru and tapas bars in Barcelona. 

In addition to the consumer campaign, Black & Abroad is releasing its findings on AI biases as a way to advance the conversation around bias and AI to the larger travel industry. In asking “Where is the Black traveler?”, the campaign aims to authentically celebrate Black joy in travel – and overcome AI biases that may stand in the way.