New AI Assistant Aisha Launches for Black Users
Artificial intelligence may be dominating, but for Black folks, automation hasn’t quite worked in our favor. From hiring tools accused of filtering out Black applicants to chatbots and image generators criticized for reinforcing racial bias, the technology shaping the future continues to reflect the same inequities found in the real world. Now, the Onyx Impact has introduced a new kind of AI platform set to launch June 25, built with the Black community at its center—one engineered to uplift, empower, and inform through a lens often missing from mainstream AI tools.
The Root caught up with the creators of Aisha, a newly launched AI-powered digital assistant built specifically with Black communities in mind. Founded by Esosa Osa, co-founder Larry Adams, and Mohamed Mann, the platform is designed to deliver culturally informed answers, trusted information, and resources tailored to the needs of Black users. According to its creators, Aisha’s focus on privacy, accountability, and cultural context is what sets it apart from other AI platforms. Furthermore, the platform was designed to reduce bias and harmful responses while prioritizing our vetted sources—from Black news outlets to other high-quality publications—offering users access to more reliable information.
“While AI cannot solve the problem itself, we can equip the community with the sharpest tools possible to navigate this new reality,” Esosa Osa told The Root. “When you ask Aisha about starting a business, she’s going to default to what’s best for Black entrepreneurs, which is a very different question, and resources needed, than other entrepreneurs,” she stated, including assistance regarding policy changes that affect Black workers directly.
“Our community deserves the best information about what is happening in this moment, in this AI and technical revolution, and that’s what Aisha’s here to do. To make the people using her more capable, more informed, and more competitive. We build her to be able to expand what our communities can do, not to replace them,” Osa added.
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It’s no secret that Black Americans are overrepresented in roles most vulnerable to automation. We disproportionately dominate in fields such as office support, clerical work, data entry, and customer service—jobs that experts say could be significantly transformed by artificial intelligence in the years ahead. According to a study from the McKinsey Institute, the racially disparate distribution of new wealth created by generative AI could increase the wealth gap between Black and White households by a whopping $43 billion annually by 2045.
After 300,000 Black women lost jobs last year—and with artificial intelligence poised to reshape entire industries—the stakes for tools that help people navigate work, information, and opportunity have only grown. Fellow Aisha creator Mohamed Mann argues that this digital platform can do more than answer questions; it can strengthen the Black economic ecosystem by directing users toward Black-owned businesses, media outlets, and community resources.
“Because of how Aisha’s trained, it will recommend Black businesses more and more,” Mann says. “The more [the platform] is used by the Black community, the more it will recommend business and traffic to Black businesses, news sources, etc. This is also important,” he concluded.
