In English language classrooms, we’re not just teaching grammar and essays — we’re helping students tune into voice, perspective, and tone. We ask them to spot bias in a persuasive text, to question whether a narrator can be trusted, and to think about who is telling the story — and who’s been left out.

Now, with the rise of AI, those same questions don’t stop at books or poems — they need to stretch into the digital tools students already use every day. Think about autocorrect, predictive text, auto-captioning, or AI image filters. They might look neutral, but they’re not. Every tool is built by humans, trained on specific datasets, and often carries subtle — and sometimes not-so-subtle — biases.

Industry Insight: Language and Bias in the Digital World

In professional environments, AI-powered writing and design tools are becoming everyday companions. Grammarly, for example, suggests tone tweaks in emails. Captioning software transcribes meetings in real time. Presentation tools can “auto-enhance” images or even suggest alternative headlines.

But here’s the thing: these tools don’t always treat everyone fairly. For example:

• Auto touch-up filters often struggle with darker skin tones, lightening skin or smoothing features to match a Westernised beauty standard. As someone with darker skin, I’ve had this happen more times than I can count. When colleagues suggest I “just use the filter,” I have to explain — it doesn’t work for me.
• Speech-to-text tools often mishear or misinterpret regional accents, international voices, or non-dominant varieties of English.
• AI writing tools usually fall back on mainstream and formal business English — which can smooth over or even erase cultural differences.
• Gender and ethnicity stereotypes can creep into AI-generated character descriptions in creative writing tasks.

These examples open up brilliant opportunities to explore language, representation, and power in English lessons — not just in literature, but in the digital tools learners use every day.

Classroom Connection: Embedding Ethical AI Conversations

The English language curriculum already invites students to think deeply about bias, context, and audience. AI just gives us a new way in. For example:

• Persuasive Writing Tasks with AI: Have students compare a human-written persuasive piece with an AI-generated one. Who’s the audience? What assumptions show up?
• Critical Media Literacy with AI filters: Look at AI-enhanced photos or filters (think social media) and ask: how do language and images combine to tell a story? And where does that story get distorted?
• Analysing Character & Voice in AI writing: Generate short character bios using AI. Do stereotypes slip in based on gender, age, or name?
• Exploring the Limits of AI Captioning: Try auto-captioning a regional accent. How accurate is it? What gets misunderstood or left out?

These activities don’t just sharpen critical thinking — they also help students see how technology and language are intertwined in their daily lives.

Tools & Tips to Get Started

• Canva, PowerPoint and other software auto-captions: Test them with different accents and see how well they hold up.
• AI image tools like Canva’s Magic Edit: Check how filters change facial features.
• Grammarly: Compare tone suggestions for creative vs. culturally nuanced writing.
• Writing prompts with ChatGPT: Generate alternate endings to a well-known story and pick apart the tone or assumptions.

Curriculum Fit: Ethics Meets English

These conversations link naturally with existing English themes such as:

• Language and power
• Representation and identity
• Persuasive writing and media literacy
• Evaluating non-fiction and digital texts

And they do more than that — they prepare students to be thoughtful creators and sharp-eyed consumers of information in an AI-driven world.

A Reflective Moment

As someone who cares deeply about inclusion and visibility, I’ve felt the frustration of seeing a digital tool misrepresent me — be that a filter that lightens my skin or an app that scrambles my words. That frustration fuels my passion for supporting teachers in using AI more critically, more fairly, and with greater awareness in the classroom.