Kaltura Launches AI Avatar to Spot Gender Bias at Work

Kaltura, the software company, marked Pride Month by unveiling Equality, an AI avatar designed to help employees and managers notice unconscious bias in everyday workplace conversation and make the environment more inclusive and equal. The company says the tool focuses on routine moments in which language and assumptions can reflect exclusionary thinking, even when there is no intent to discriminate.

The avatar was developed as part of a broader Kaltura effort to examine how AI agents and digital avatars affect equality, diversity, and inclusion inside organizations. It holds conversations with employees and managers about familiar workplace situations and pushes them to question assumptions and speech habits that often go unnoticed. Kaltura gave examples such as assuming a female employee has a husband, or telling a man planning a relocation that he will need to "convince his wife," remarks that can alienate employees in same-sex relationships or those whose families do not fit traditional patterns.

The company is also studying how digital characters reinforce organizational assumptions, for example by depicting management or expert figures as men while service and support figures are portrayed as women. Kaltura recently received the gold LGBTWORK standard for its work advancing gender and sexual equality and diversity in Israeli workplaces. The certification is awarded to organizations that promote inclusive policy, fair recruitment, staff and manager training, and ongoing efforts to create a safe and welcoming workplace for LGBTQ employees.

Sigal Sarur, Kaltura's senior vice president of human resources and chairwoman of the Shavot association, said, "When an organization chooses to promote diversity and inclusion throughout the year, it is not only doing the right thing morally, it becomes a much stronger, smarter and more effective organization." She said Kaltura sees equal opportunity as "a growth engine."