AI-based introduction platform Boardy is under fire for an email campaign which used its AI chatbot to generate emails about user’s profile photos (that was alluded to be) in the style of US President Donald Trump.

The American company aims to add AI to professional networks, using Boardy, its chatbot, to analyse introductory calls from users and connecting them with people who share the same interests, typically over LinkedIn. It just won a VC seed funding round of $8m to bolster its AI offering, a process which increased its expanding network by 10,000 people, the chatbot said itself.

Just a week after it announced its funding win, it rolled out a new campaign, beginning on the day Trump was inaugurated as President.

In an email to users, the chatbot attempted to compliment recipients based on their profile photo in the style of the President. While the email did not outrightly say the chatbot was in the voice of Trump, it heavily alluded to the President, saying that someone who was “busy today” had taken a look at the user photos.

The emails are drawing intense scrutiny for the gender split in their tone and focus. Female email recipients were complimented almost exclusively on their appearance, while male users were given less aesthetically-focussed compliments.

How Are Users Reacting?

The pattern was exposed across LinkedIn as users simply did what Boardy asked of them: the chatbot urged users to share their emails across LinkedIn with the hashtag #MakeLinkedInFunAgain in the mode of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to Make America Great Again.

Co-CEO of Tidal, Anna Dewar Gully shared her email, which focused on her “tremendous smile” and “perfectly shaped eyebrows.”

Humaira Ahmed took to LinkedIn, expressing her disappointment at having the chatbot comment on her looks, including her “platinum hair” and “blazer and white collar combo.”

“What was likely intended as humor came across as disrespectful amplifying the very issues many of us face daily as working women,” she said.

“What hurts even more is the realisation that now, on top of everything, we might have to deal with harassment from AI bots too.”

In perhaps one of the more disturbing emails, COO Milly Barker shared her thoughts on Boardy’s email, referencing her despair at Trump’s inauguration that day “only for some motherf*cking robot to shove itself into my inbox with comments about how my ‘mouth commands attention’ and that my ‘eyes sparkle.'”

“It, oddly, doesn’t mention my multiple degrees or my significant professional experience, it just wants me to know that my value in society is purely aesthetic,” she added in her post.

Men, on the other hand, were typically complimented on other aspects, including more appropriately their professional acumen and “approachable excellence” which was echoed for Consultant Jeremy Krage and Boardy’s chief executive Andrew D’Zouza.

The President is of course not without controversy – over 20 women have accused the President of sexual misconduct including rape and sexual assault. He was found liable for sexually abusing a magazine columnist in a New York department store in the 1990s in a civil court decision in 2023. Prior to his first stint as commander in chief, it was revealed that Trump said he liked to “grab them by the p*ssy,” referring to women he wanted to pursue sexually.

It gives pause as to what speeches or speech patterns of the former and current President were used to train the AI bot, if the emails were edited, or why they thought this would be a good idea in the first place.

Routinely, Trump has focused on the aesthetic of women, even his campaign rivals,  calling former Vice President Kamala Harris “a beautiful women” while he dogmatically attacked her ethnicity.

It is therefore of no surprise that something trained on Trump’s words, tone, style, or mannerisms would spit out something sexist.

The decision to send these emails out, whether they were edited or not, in an effort to bring back ‘fun’ and lightheartedness, on a day when millions fear the potential fallout of a second Trump presidency, while albeit some were celebrating, feels misguided.

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Tech Dominating Headlines For The Wrong Reasons

Boardy AI is an American company that aims to connect people professionally through introductions, and recently raised $8M in venture capital funding to invigorate its AI chatbot.

As women-founded teams struggle to gain even 2% of VC funding, and often miss out on the AI funding boom, the Broady story touches on the many facets of sexism and gender inequality in the tech world.

Shortly after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was in attendance alongside fellow tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos at Trump’s inauguration, said that the tech world needed more ‘masculine energy’, the tech industry further exposed itself.

Andrew D’Souza, CEO of Boardy, took full credit for the idea and apologised, but at first seemed gun-ho at the campaign to boost the AI chatbot’s reach. D’Souza said that he hoped Boardy could help people “have a bit more fun along the way,” saying the chatbot wants users “to take ourselves less seriously.”

D’Souza’s post did include a message from Boardy in the style of Trump, and did focus on his appearance in his profile photo, saying that D’Souza’s beard was “perfectly maintained,” his casual style was “genius branding” and that the way he held his microphone was a “casual power move.”

Since the backlash, D’Souza issued an apology, saying that complimenting people based on their appearance was not something the company intended to do in their mission to connect people.

It’s been a very exposing few weeks in the tech sphere, from Zuckerberg’s earlier mentioned comments to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, appearing to do a Nazi salute twice at Trump’s inauguration. A call for more masculine energy in tech is hardly going to encourage some of the half a million missing women from the sector, as revealed by research from BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, to join the industry.

The leadership of one person does not necessarily reflect the feelings or values of an entire nation, or an entire sector. However, the Broady incident does provide insight into a clear disconnect between the formidable abilities of nascent technology and a willingness to use it in a considered and responsible manner.

Given how polarising a character Donald Trump is, putting his rhetoric front and centre of a campaign representing a platform that’s meant to engender connectivity and accessibility can only charitably be described as misguided).