New research and Facebook’s own ad archive show that the company’s new system to ensure diverse audiences for housing and employment ads has many of the same problems as its predecessor.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) presents risks to equality, potentially embedding bias and discrimination. Auditing tools are often promised as a solution. However our new research, which examines tools for auditing AI used in recruitment, finds these tools are often inadequate in ensuring compliance with UK Equality Law, good governance and best practice. We argue in this report that a more comprehensive approach than technical auditing is needed to safeguard equality in the use of AI for hiring, which shapes access to work. Here, we present first steps which could be taken to achieve this. We also publish a prototype AI Equality Impact Assessment which we plan to develop and pilot.