Quiet achievers are losing ground in the age of AI
I asked ChatGPT who I was.It gave a confident answer. But it was wrong.
What came back surprised me because the ChatGPT version of me that existed told a different story than what I had lived.
This story is similar to what I am hearing from raft of professional women who are telling me they are experiencing exactly the same. The reason for this is quite simple.
The modesty and humility we have shown for years has not only been detrimental to many women’s careers, and it’s also about to be doubled down.
Women are up to five times less likely to self-promote than men according to 2025, La Trobe University published research drawing on 80,000 people across 76 countries. Not because we lack achievements worth promoting. Because we have spent entire careers learning that staying quiet is often safer than speaking up.
A separate study published in Nature Communications in 2025 tracked 3.5 million researchers across public social media platforms.Women were 28% less likely to promote their own work online, even when the quality was equal to men's. The gap was widest for the most accomplished women –those who ironically had the highest-impact work and the most to share.
Enter AI platforms as a search tool which have stormed into everyday use by recruiters, HR, CEOs and even boards, and we are left with some women who have done the most, being the hardest for AI to find.
AI models work by pulling from sources such as earned media, YouTube, industry publications, and LinkedIn. The more you appear in these sources, and the more regularly you advocate for yourself on platforms such as LinkedIn, the more likely a platform such as ChatGPT is going to accurately describe who you are and position you favourably.
For the women who have been succeeding humbly, this is bad news. But the good news is there is still have a window to rectify this, even if it is narrowing.
The leaders and executives who will be the most visible in five years are building their reputations now –consistently, confidently, authentically and in the places where AI can find them.
Here are my five top tips to start bridging that visibility gap:
1. Ask AI who you are.
Go to ChatGPT, Gemini andPerplexity and type your name. Read what comes back as though a stranger wroteit. Whatever is missing, wrong, or out of date is now your to-do list. Note carefully which sources are being cited.
2. Update your LinkedIn properly.
A title and a headshot tell no one what you actually do. A few sentences about the outcomes you are known for do. LinkedIn is a primary citation source for AI.
3. Put your point of view somewhere findable.
One article, one interview, one opinion published under your name does more for how you are perceived than a decade of good work nobody wrote down. Earned media is weighted heavily byAI.
4. Ask people who rate you to say so publicly.
A recommendation from someone else carries weight that nothing you say about yourself can replicate.
5. Make your profiles consistent.
A different job title across three platforms, or a bio untouched since your last promotion, reads to an AI the same way a stalled account reads to a person: out of date, and not worth trusting.
Remember - your reputation is being built right now, with or without you. The only question is whether you are the one building it.
