Software development company Nuance Labs is at the forefront of Black women’s indignation after their AI avatar Emma reached virality in the worst way. Emma isn’t just any AI model; she is a technological agent created by the team behind Nuance Labs whose physical image is mirrored after Black women. Both her appearance and the personality traits she’s exhibited in recorded interactions with various users perpetuate negative stereotypes often attributed to Blackness and Black womanhood. If that isn’t enough, the creators behind the agent are non-reflective of the product they’ve created.
Out of fourteen team members we were able to identify through the company’s introduction video, none of them are Black.
Yet, the digital worker they’ve created through AI is a Black woman with unkempt hair and a conveniently witty demeanor. Understandably, Black women and people across online platforms like Threads, Instagram, and Reddit are repulsed by the product for various reasons. For the company to decide to use an AI agent that attempts to capture the appearance, or “nuance” of a Black woman, its efforts are starkingly offensive at best. At worst, this is a modern and most recent example of technological slavery. While Emma’s existence is alarming, she isn’t the first of her kind. In 2017, a white, British photographer created the world’s first digital super model named Shudu who is also modeled after a Black woman. EBONY first talked about the history and dangers of Black AI influencers and technological entities created by our counterparts in AI Influencers: The Risks They Have on the Black Community’s Image in July of 2025.
Much to our dismay, the advancement of production in the form of Blackface technology has only expanded. Nuance Labs is just the latest example that has gained traction. That said, Emma’s virality has renewed the conversation of digital blackface and offers us an opportunity to thoughtfully examine the unethicalness exhibited through the technology’s existence.
There’s a Thin Line Between Inspiration and Appropriation
Let’s be unequivocally clear about why Emma is a hardline example of both appropriation and digital blackface. The appropriation, which is similarly regarded as stealing, is displayed in the AI agent’s conception. The fact that a group of fourteen developers decided to create a Black AI agent to conduct research on their behalf but none of the (known) team members that participated in her creation are Black is inherently racist. It is a crafty and disturbing way of eliciting free labor from Black women and it is a safe bet to assume that this is not coincidental. Upwards of 600,000 Black women have been pushed out of the workforce in just one year. This fact continues to come up because it is directly connected to the attempt to erase Black women in the workforce by not hiring us and finding alternative methods to implement our work ethic within an organization’s workflow without having to appropriately compensate us for our contributions. Emma, Shudu, AI influencers, and any other AI originated programs that attempt to reflect Blackness through technology without proper input of Black people is not only racist, it is intentional exploitation.
Practice Caution With Engagement
As tempting as it is to want to see what Nuance Labs has created with Emma and experience the extent of the program’s attempt at reflecting humanity while embodying Blackness, engaging only causes more harm. Programs like this learn through engagement. No matter what you say, what you ask, or how you present, its sole function is to learn, adjust, and adapt rapidly. Through each interaction, it banks each encounter and it feeds information back to its developers. That feeding of information allows developers to further advance the technology, leading to more sophisticated iterations of the program and even informs future programs.
What we should and can do in the meantime is to continue challenging these companies that are insistent on exploiting Black labor in any form, technological or otherwise. Furthermore, it’s important that we continue to have these conversations both online and in real time to discuss the implications and dangers of technology like what this company has created with Emma. It is our likeness, and our existence that is continually being exploited; therefore, it is our business to continue speaking out about the entities that are engaging in this kind of malpractice.