Inspiring women in AI: Kelly Vero

What AI-related projects are you currently working on?

NAK3D (pronounced NAKED) is a digital fashion factory that uses AI to produce digital garments at scale for the video games industry and the fashion industry.

If you go to an e-commerce site, you might buy a handbag or a pair of shoes. Mostly, that has been in a studio with a photographer and has been painstakingly crafted and curated. I created a system where we can use digital twins in place of the photography and the photo shoots, and that gives us a single source of truth on an object.

I added AI to the process to be able to develop a faster way for the retail and video game industries to produce more content.

I have also recently written a book, Breaking Through Bytes. I wanted to explore the relationships and links between female role models and women who are active in the technology industries now.

There were no role models when I was growing up. In fact, the role model that I had when I was growing – Ada Lovelace – had been dead for over 100 years by the time I discovered her.

I wanted to be able to allow a new generation of women working in technology to find role models that were closest in their age, their specialism, and their thinking.

I had some great conversations and some super interviews with women who are amazingly active in the industry. I also took an opportunity to highlight and spotlight some of the women that we probably haven't heard of, from days past, or women who have created things like augmented reality (AR) at NASA.

The book encapsulates those conversations and also the conversations that we're having today about why it is so difficult for women to be able to find spaces inside technology and specific specialisms.

What inspired you to pursue a career in AI and related fields?

It was Christmas 1982, and I had been bugging my parents to buy me a Spectrum 16k computer. I'd been playing arcade game machines, and I wanted to make my own game.

The way to do that was to embrace technology. I come from a family where my dad was a working-class engineer and my mum was really technology-minded, though unfortunately, during the 70s and 80s, women were not pushed into these sorts of careers.

I wanted to buck the trend by the time that I'd left school and work in a technology job only to find that my careers teacher at school had different ideas and felt that me working in technology was probably not the best use of my abilities.

But technology stayed with me, and it was something that I wanted to do. So I never stopped coding and I never stopped hoping and dreaming. Then when I was 19, I started working in in technology.

I just kind of knocked down doors, pushed doors down... I really wanted to work in tech.

What recent or potential breakthroughs in AI are you most excited about?

Because I've got a background in video games, I've always looked at the possibilities of being able to ensure that everybody can play on a single level playing field.

Unfortunately, AI has not given us those opportunities. It's neither equal in its development, nor is it equal in its output.

I'm all about closing that digital gap and the poverty gap in everything that I create.

And I think we're getting to a place with AI now where we can create things from the comfort of our local computer or develop our own GPTs and not have to line the pockets of huge businesses worldwide.

What potential risks or downsides of AI development concern you?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are some of the big risks inside the space.

Ever since we started this path with Siri, etc., we have tended to lean into females massively to provide us with information, advice, and guidance. But that provides its own ethical bias.

I think ethical bias is the one thing that we have to really keep a hold of, and we've effectively got to strong-arm it out of the conversation. If we're going to create things that have a level playing field and an opportunity for everybody to be included, then we have to make sure that the inclusion point is of uniformity and universality.

That's my biggest fear and I think that's the biggest risk to AI as a whole – eventually, we are simply training AI to be more biased towards the outputs we favor through everything from the color of our skin to our gender.

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the AI field, and how have you overcome them?

There's still a huge barrier to entry for women wanting to get into any of the technology areas.

Oftentimes, we are shoved into research. We might spend years on our education, learning our craft, etc., only to be forced into doing research in an area that is interesting to us. But we want to be practical!

Another big problem that women in technology have is the inability for others to recognize what strengths we bring to the technology industries as a whole.

We have to lean into each other much more. There are organizations that I talk about in my book, like the Girl Geek Dinners, which I think was fantastic because it brought together women from science and physics and technology as a whole to talk about the things that we're passionate about.

We're not all into going and buying handbags and shoes. Some of us would like to buy robots and video games. So, being able to find that common ground in those spaces is very important.

I think the technology industry generally is poorly served by diversity across the board, not just from women. And I would love to be able to see more bigger companies embracing because when they embrace, everyone follows.

There's currently not enough space for us to be able to be in those places, and that's a real shame. We're 50% of the population.

What initiatives or changes would you like to see to encourage more women to enter the field of AI?

It makes me angry to think that we're still being forced into gender roles from a young age, which we carry into the era where we should be making critical decisions about our future.

If I was a 9-year-old in the 80s and I could find my way to work in technology as a 52-year-old today, I don't understand why we're asking young women what they want to do at the age of 15 when we should have been teaching them how to code when they were 5.

So I would love to see more female gender roles being populated amongst 8-year-olds and 5-year-olds, and not just waiting until college or high school age.

Some of the greatest things that we take for granted today were brought about by women being part of teams. And a lot of the women in my book talk about being team members.

They don't want to stand alone as being the kind of leaders in this field when in fact most of the time they are.

What advice would you give to young women considering a career in AI?

Find the area you feel the most comfortable in. Explore the possibilities that lie within that space.

Even though I've got game technology experience, I was able to apply that knowledge to building my own startup.

We're all starting now to introduce AI into our workplaces. So what things about those particular tools excite and inspire?

And then I think it's important to find your tribe, – who, where, and how can you get support?

Is it through friends? Are you part of a coding group? Do you have meetups, you know, to discuss Love Island, but also on the sly, you have conversations about, you know, code or Nerf technology, or whatever? I certainly do with people in my social group.

Find people that you connect with, first of all, and then figure out, what are those pain points that we could work on together? Or can we do some hacks? Can we collaborate?

There is no limit to the age you can change your career or your life or your outlook on anything.

We're living our lives, and we should get the most out of what it is that we're doing.

What advice would you give to other women for getting started with using AI in their research, work, or life?

When I first started coding, the thing that I wanted to do the most was to code "Hello World."

And I think the Hello World in AI applies to the pain point that you've got in your daily life.

If you wanted to get started, just go to something like Claude or ChatGPT and select a prompt, any old prompt that might enhance your daily life.

As I've got a fashion startup, my first question in ChatGPT was about arranging my wardrobe by color. And ChatGPT came up with a million different answers for me on how I could do that.

There are loads of fun ways to be able to start in AI. That's just a silly throw away one.

But being able to use AI to enhance your daily life really does make you fall into a rabbit hole where you want AI to perform better for you, and you need it to solve some ridiculous tasks.

It's a super time saver and means that you've got much longer to be able to finish that episode of Love Island...