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Beyond Bias Promptathons

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
100+
Workshop Participants
24
Member Organisations in Stakeholders Consortium
6
Workshops
2
Roundtable sessions

About the Prompt-a-thons

In October 2025, we convened a series of in-person workshops across India in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. Conducted in Bangalore, Delhi, and Pune, these workshops engaged participants in hands-on experimentation with our Beyond Bias AI image training tool, through which they fine-tuned models to express distinct aesthetic languages grounded in personal artistic practice and collective cultural imagination.

The workshops were very well-received and participant feedback emphasised the value of working with a tool that enabled greater control over visual representation and authorship. The workshops also functioned as participatory sites of knowledge production, foregrounding questions of authorship, representation, and technological mediation. Participants collectively highlighted concerns around cultural appropriation and AI model misuse, and contributed to the expansion of an open manifesto that reflects community-led approaches to AI development.

About Beyond Bias

Panel Discussions

The prompt-a-thons at each venue was followed by a public panel discussion in the evenings.

Highlights discussed by the panelists:

  • How can we build accessible, inclusive AI tools that serve cultural creators - not just Big Tech or elites?
  • How does AI interact with traditional cultural forms such as craft, folk art, iconography, and sacred imagery? How have bias, misappropriation, or misrepresentation played out in these areas?
  • How do gender, gender identity, sexuality, caste, and race intersect with AI bias? In what ways can AI tools perpetuate stereotypes, misgendering, invisibility, or over-representation.

About the Speakers

Bangalore | 6th October 2025
Kalika Bali
Kalika Bali
Senior Principal Researcher
Microsoft Research India

Working on AI, NLP, Speech, and Technology for Empowerment. She has been focusing on enhancing human-computer interactions through language technologies for more than two decades. Her research also explores the intersection of gender and technology. She was featured on the inaugural TIME100 AI list in 2023 for her ongoing efforts to break down language barriers and foster inclusivity in the AI sphere.

Raghu Dharmaraju
Raghu Dharmaraju
CEO
ARTPARK at IISc

He has over two decades of experience in founding and scaling innovations and institutions; bridging deep-tech research, societal impact and business; and shaping national-level policy and institutional mechanisms. He is a double winner of the Global Grand Challenge for Catalyzing Equitable AI by BMGF. He is also a founding leader of Wadhwani AI and has founded national initiatives in data (for AI and modelling) in health, pandemic prevention, and languages.

Jaspreet Bindra
Jaspreet Bindra
Co-founder & CEO
AI&Beyond

Advancing AI literacy in organisations, and Founder of Tech Whisperer Ltd., advising on AI, generative AI, the future of work, and digital transformation. A global keynote speaker and educator, he has 25+ years of leadership with Mahindra Group, Microsoft, Tata, and as part of the founding team at Baazee (later eBay India). Author of The Tech Whisperer and Winning with AI, he writes for leading media and teaches at Ashoka University, Singularity University, and Harvard Business Publishing. He holds a Master’s in AI, Ethics, and Society from Cambridge University.

New Delhi | 8th October 2025
Gauri Pathak
Gauri Pathak
Programs and Communication Manager
Khoj

With a strong interest in interaction, participation, and aesthetic education in cultural spaces. She holds a Master’s degree in International Media Cultural Work. Gauri joined Khoj as a Fellow in 2021, and over the past four years has worked with the curatorial and media teams.

Ayush Chauhan
Ayush Chauhan
Co-founder
Quicksand

Leads the studio in new business, strategy and project management. Ayush is a strong advocate for transformative roles for design within public policy, international development, social enterprise and innovation, for which he was also granted the prestigious Yale World Fellowship in 2012. He is also an avid triathlete.

Nikhil Pahwa
Nikhil Pahwa
Founder-editor
MediaNama

He is an Indian journalist, digital rights advocate, and the founder-editor of a leading publication on India’s digital/telecom policy. He played a pivotal role in the “Save the Internet” campaign to preserve net neutrality in India, and also co-founded the Internet Freedom FoundationHe is a TED Fellow, Asia21 Young Leader, and was named among the “Indians of Tomorrow” by India Today.

Pune | 10th October 2025
Gauri Pathak
Trishla Talera
Entrepreneur
Creative steward and farmer

She is the founder of Evolving Culture Foundation, a platform for Creativity and Culture in India. She supports deeply innovative and critical practices through mentorship, residencies and festivals. In the last 10 years, her foundation has grown to be a dynamic cultural hub in Asia.She has been recognized in the - Top 20 women running the Indian art scene by Art Gorgeous, an international media group.

Ayush Chauhan
Anokhi Shah
Founder
Quicksand

Leads the studio in new business, strategy and project management. Ayush is a strong advocate for transformative roles for design within public policy, international development, social enterprise and innovation, for which he was also granted the prestigious Yale World Fellowship in 2012. He is also an avid triathlete.

Nikhil Pahwa
Chaitanya Modak 
Conceptual artist

He makes books, videos, installations and concrete poetry under the moniker Won-Tolla. He runs an independent branding and graphic design studio called Inhouse Design. He believes in art as a social practice where he mentors communities by facilitating workshops involving public participation using words and pictures. On weekends he curates and organises wall murals as Bhitti Chitra.

What should I bring to the workshop?
Please bring a curated set of 8–10 images to train your custom fine-tuned AI model. You must either own these images or have the necessary copyright or usage rights, including permissions to adapt them. If you do not have such material, we will provide a sample dataset for use during the session.

In addition, please bring a laptop with an internet browser installed. For the best experience, we recommend using Google Chrome.
Do I need prior knowledge of coding or AI tools?
No prior knowledge is required. The workshop is designed to make the creation and use of AI tools accessible and inclusive, regardless of technical background
What kind of images are suitable?
Your images should be in a standard format such as JPEG or PNG. Ensure that you hold the required copyrights or usage permissions. If attribution is necessary, please provide the appropriate credit line. Alternatively, you may also bring images that are released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Should the images follow a consistent style?
Yes. For effective model training, the images should reflect a coherent style, palette, or aesthetic. A consistent visual language enables the model to learn and reproduce the intended characteristics more accurately. Example: one of our fine-tuned AI models was trained on a set of Rajasthani Mughal Miniatures sourced from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Library.
What will happen to my dataset and generated images?
During the session, you will be able to choose the level of privacy or openness for the images produced by your model. While we encourage participants to contribute to the open-source community, you may also decide to keep your dataset and outputs private.