As businesses realize the high value of artificial intelligence in improving operations, understanding customers, setting and meeting strategic goals, and more, embedding AI into their products is moving from a “nice to have” feature to a competitive necessity for software as a service companies. However, it’s essential to tread carefully; SaaS companies must be aware of the risk that both implicit and explicit bias can be introduced into their products and services through AI.

Below, members of Forbes Business Council share strategies to help better detect and minimize bias in AI tools. Read on to learn how SaaS companies can ensure fairness and inclusivity within their products and services—and protect their customers and brand reputation.

To build AI tools that people trust, businesses must embed ethical AI principles into the core of product development. That starts with taking responsibility for training data. Many AI products rely on open, Web-scraped content, which may contain inaccurate, unverified or biased information. Companies can reduce exposure to this risk by using closed, curated content stored in vector databases. - Peter Beven, iEC Professional Pty Ltd

It is impossible to make AI unbiased, as humans are biased in the way we feed it with data. AI only sees patterns in our choices, whether they are commonly frowned upon patterns, like race and location, or not-so-obvious patterns, like request time and habits. Like humans, different AI models may come to different conclusions depending on their training. SaaS companies should test AI models with their preferred datasets. - Ozan Bilgen, Base64.ai