In another unsurprising example of motorsport’s inhospitable mindset toward hiring competent women, the Mahindra Racing Formula E team has announced a new partnership with Ava Rose, a literal AI creation, who will… engage with fans? Share knowledge about technology? “Navigate the cutting edge of innovation to create positive change” (whatever that means)? I guess there were just no human women dying to work in motorsport when it came time for Mahindra to hire someone!
Ava Rose, who goes by the handle avabeyondreality on Instagram, is a “sustainable tech queen & racing rebel robot” who is 28 years old and lives in England — according to the bio. The feed is primarily a lot of photos of a conventionally attractive brunette that are created to look like selfies, along with some ads for products that this robot allegedly uses. Perplexing.
Somehow, Mahindra Racing got the big idea to “hire’” Ava as its “artificial intelligence ambassador”who will also “share some exciting [behind-the-scenes] content from the championship over the season.” The Instagram announcement is accompanied by a “selfie” of Ava decked out in Mahindra gear and standing in a location looks like it’s trying to be a motorsport venue but that also maybe doubles as a mall.
The backlash to Mahindra’s announcement was swift and deservedly harsh. Ash Vandelay, an award-winning motorsport Twitch streamer and official Red Bull Racing content creator, responded to the Instagram post with “motorsport companies/teams will do anything but hire actual women.” Females in Motorsport, an organization dedicated to highlighting all the ways real-life women contribute to the racing world, responded, “We know PLENTY of amazing women to actually hire.” Noelle Flamingo, a journalist with an incredibly diverse array of beats that includes motorsport and the automotive industry, said, “lol men in motorsport will literally invent a woman so they don’t have to hire one,” as well as, “it’s giving control, it’s giving objectification, it’s giving scared little boys in the marketing team. Honestly, this is so PATHETIC.”
And… yeah.
Motorsport has a very long history of actively excluding women from its ranks, whether that be the ban on women in the pit lane at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or the repeated segregation of racers into an all-female series, and while there are plenty of people in paddocks now who are not white, cisgender men, there are still massive problems — from longtime racers calling their fellow competitors gender-based slurs to the rampant sexualization of any woman who wants to get involved in racing. Now, instead of actually hiring a real-life human woman, we can just whip up a social media robot who will always look nice and say the right things. If I was a gambler, I’d go ahead and bet that a group of fellas not only came up with the idea but that it was men who whipped up the AI prompts that made Ava Rose.
Ah, well! Maybe if all women were just conventionally pretty and only had feelings and thoughts that were totally dictated by men and also maybe if we were not real and messy and great, we could finally have a shot at being treated as equals in the racing world. Until then, Mahindra’s new ambassador is a good reminder that there’s still a lot of work to be done.