By Dr. KáLyn Coghill ·Updated February 27, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

Shortly after Offensive images and racist tropes about us and our level of education means that we are more likely than others to hear people express surprise when they demonstrate strong language skills in the workplace. Black people also have some of the highest maternal mortality rates because doctors and nurses are more likely to dismiss their pain due to tropes about “toughness” or “thick skin”. I, myself, have experienced the way that racist tropes show up in rooms with white academics who have dismissed my research as lacking rigor because it focuses on harm leveled against people who look like me. This is not just hurtful, it’s disabling. 

But artificial intelligence adds a sinister layer to this long-standing form of violence. Anyone can access these generative applications and alter any image they want without guardrails, moderation, or even consequences. Where online trolls have long perpetuated racist narratives through words, now they can do the same via images churned out in seconds and spread online even faster. But despite its name, AI can’t shake the fact that it has human DNA. AI mimics what real people, not robots, program it to do and the data it does it with. 

To stem the deluge of online misogynoir, we need to reflect on our built-in biases so that AI doesn’t continually replicate them and reproduce harm. We have seen scholars, organizers, and scientists like Timnit W. Gebru, Joy Buolamwini, and Ruha Benjamin talk about the power dynamics and harms that these biases replicate in digital spaces. 

But we also need to pre-empt the harmful ways that AI perpetuates racist stereotypes by educating people so that they know to call it out when they see it, especially young people who are growing up with this new technology. And when we talk about educating people on AI, we need to be explicit about how racism plays a key role in what we are witnessing in real time. We can do this by providing examples of the ways harmful racist tropes have had a dangerous impact on Black nonbinary, agender, and gender-variant people throughout history — even teaching this to students as early as the primary school level. We also need to create curricula that give young people the foundation for identifying and combating these harms. We also can’t forget that our own digital hygiene is monumental in combatting harmful AI, especially when it comes to targeting Black nonbinary, agender, and gender-variant folks in particular. Interrogating images and videos you see before reposting or resharing can help mitigate the virality of harm.

As a disabled person, I often wrestle with the ways that AI can be used as a tool for accessibility. I’ve seen it help people with cognitive impairments who use AI to help them brainstorm or work through brain fog. But I am all too aware that it hurts me as a Black person, which is also a part of my identity. We need to call a thing a thing, and what we witnessed with Nekima Levy Armstrong, what I have experienced and observed online, and what is becoming even more normalized is the racist use of AI to harm this group. 

We must ensure that our education system can teach young people the harmful narratives that AI perpetuates, and then we must hold people accountable for them — even when that’s our own government. Because if AI can be turned into a tool that makes the world more dangerous for Black nonbinary, agender, and gender-variant folks, the next shiny innovation won’t be far behind.

The post I’ve Battled Racist Online Trolls For Years. AI Is A Whole Different Beast appeared first on Essence.

Author: Shelby Stewart

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