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In mid-April, Reese Witherspoon took to Instagram to deliver a message: It’s time to start using AI. While standing in her kitchen, dressed in an oversize sweater and blending a smoothie, she told her 30 million followers she was shocked to discover only three of the ten women in her book club said they had used the technology. Even though women’s jobs are three times more likely to be replaced by AI than men’s are, she pointed out, so far men are more likely to embrace it. “I think we should learn some really good tools that are going to make our everyday lives easier and better,” she said, leaning toward the camera. “Do you want me to share what I’m learning with you?” She spoke with the warm but firm tone of a C-suite exec telling the new girl how to impress in a boardroom meeting. We are now seeing the girlbossification of AI as famous women try to convince other women that adopting the technology isn’t just the best thing they can do for their careers — it’s the only way to survive.
“You cannot be left behind when it comes to using technology that is shaping the way that work is evolving,” Mel Robbins, author of The Let Them Theory, said in an Instagram Reel announcing her recent partnership with Microsoft Copilot. “Oh my God, you have to lean in.” The woman who coined corporate feminism’s tagline is also doing just that. Sheryl Sandberg says her organization will now focus on closing the so-called “AI gender gap” with the help of a newly appointed 25-year-old CEO who will be “making sure that women harness the power of AI to further their careers.” The Lean In organization is now posting Carrie Bradshaw memes. “I couldn’t help but wonder … is AI the new boys’ club?” There are, of course, tons of women who work in AI without making it a feminist issue, though you wouldn’t know it from these social-media posts.
One start-up founder, Erin Grau, said the technology could be a 24/7 mentor for women, helping to free them “from the weight of imposter syndrome” or offering feedback on “overly apologetic language in their emails.” “This technology could be more than just another tool,” she wrote for Time. “It could be the great equalizer we’ve been fighting for, giving women the support, efficiency, and confidence that the prior systems have consistently failed to provide.” Grau and other prominent women in tech recently helped Gloria Steinem use AI for the first time: “As we sat with this remarkable icon in her home where countless leaders have shared their stories and planned for change, we confronted an uncomfortable truth: women are once again being left behind.”
Other big names have been getting onboard too. “We have to lean into it,” Sandra Bullock said of AI. “We have to use it in a really constructive and creative way, make it our friend.” Bumble’s CEO, who has developed an AI dating assistant, said, “We are going to lean in fast and furiously.” Paris Hilton uses her custom AI chatbot, which looks and talks like her, to create content for product launches and brand partnerships so she can spend more time with her family. “My AI could be entertaining people around the world while I’m at home with my babies,” she said in a recent CNBC interview.
In the future these women are selling, AI can make you a better worker and mother and a more fulfilled human being. Automate as much of your job as you can so you can focus on getting that promotion, get an AI assistant to keep track of your kids’ doctors’ appointments and soccer games, and use ChatGPT to see what you’d look like with bangs or bleached eyebrows without wasting your precious time at a salon.
The most common response to this kind of evangelizing has been pure annoyance. “Reese Witherspoon is trying to tell us, ‘Hey, women, get down with your own subjugation,” one commenter said. “Shilling for the technocrat bros in late stage capitalism under the guise of feminism is beyond insulting. It’s vile.” Telling women they’ll be left behind if they don’t adopt AI ASAP was just fearmongering, others said, designed to empty people’s wallets before they could second-guess what they were buying. (Witherspoon did something similar with NFTs, and we all know how that turned out.) Then everyone really lost their minds when they saw that Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, had partnered with Purdue University to offer online classes aimed at young women on how to adopt AI. The backlash was so intense she made a follow-up post a few days later. “To be clear, no one is paying me to talk about this,” Witherspoon said. “I don’t believe computers should replace humanity.” Meanwhile, Robbins was criticized for encouraging women to feed their private financial information, including bank statements, into Copilot. The internet responded with a resounding Please never do this. “I hope the check was worth it boo boo,” one influencer said, “because the integrity is doo doo.”
It was satisfying to scroll through my phone and see so many women call bullshit on the idea that AI could be empowering. While ten years ago we might have been sold on a “rise and grind” version of success, we now know better. Sure, learning to use Claude might help you hold on to a job a little longer. But it won’t stop robots from replacing receptionists, and it certainly won’t solve gender inequality. Even the girlbosses themselves don’t seem that idealistic about what they’re selling this time. Their message is less that AI can help women have it all, and more that it might help them not backslide. The new ambition isn’t to keep scaling new heights — it’s to cling to what you already have.
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