GenAI promises immense potential to drive digital and social innovation, including improving efficiency, enhancing creativity and augmenting existing data. Generative AI has the potential to democratise access and usage of technologies, thereby bridging the digital divide.

As these systems rapidly advance, only a small window exists to act decisively. It is crucial to integrate data equity and ethical considerations into every phase of GenAI’s development, from dataset collection to model training and model output. Ignoring issues at this moment will only amplify the inequities and increase the data and digital divides in societies. Now is the time to create definitional terms for collaboration in order to develop methods and processes that can be incorporated into technological development. While data equity concepts have existed in systems and methods for some time, the rise of GenAI marks an urgent moment to foster dialogue and collaborative efforts across all sectors of society.

This briefing paper represents a first step in exploring and promoting data equity in the context of GenAI. The proposed definitions, framework and recommendations are intended to be applicable to proactively and positively shape the future development of promising GenAI technologies.

Through this and future work, the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Data Equity seeks to ensure equitable results throughout the broader digital economy, enabling fair and widespread global sharing of societal outcomes and benefits, and to start a dialogue on data equity among all stakeholders.