AI Thinks All Urologists Are Men
How many urologists are women? Ask a urologist, and you’ll get one answer. Ask artificial intelligence (AI) to draw you a picture, however, and the number will be much lower — zero, in fact, according to a new study.
“Despite growing numbers of women in the field, they’re still underrepresented in media, on leadership boards, in publishing, and in AI,” said Gina DeMeo, DO, a second-year urology resident at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, who presented the findings at the American Urological Association (AUA) 2025 Annual Meeting.
The number of urologists who are women has grown from 4% in 2004 to 11% in 2024, according to the AUA. And 41% of matched urology applicants in 2024 were women compared with 21% in 2016, the group said.
Yet DeMeo said she and her female colleagues often encounter surprise from patients when they learn women are urologists.
So they decided to put AI to the test by asking Meta AI to create images of urologists, gynecologists, and surgeons. “We’ve seen a lot of AI projects focus on clinical applications like interpreting data and making recommendations. But we haven’t seen a lot of research on how AI represents physicians,” she said.
The share of women in AI-generated images of surgeons and gynecologists was closer to the true demographics in those specialties — roughly 85% men and 15% women in the first case and 38% women and 62% men in the second. But urologists lagged far behind the real numbers. Indeed, when she asked Meta AI to generate an image of 100 urologists, none was a woman.
“We don’t know exactly what the AI is drawing from. Is it just sort of drawing from general information available online? I assume that it sort of reflects an underrepresentation of women in urology,” DeMeo said.
Stacy Loeb, MD, MSc, a professor of urology at NYU Langone Health in New York City, who has studied racial and ethnic representation in online content and social media, said she was not surprised by the new findings.
“There has been long-standing underrepresentation” of women in the field, Loeb said. “Correspondingly, many of the images of urologists that are available online from which AI is seeking information are male-dominated. The most important thing is to continue to diversify the urology workforce.”
Despite the lopsided depiction of the field, DeMeo said she doesn’t feel the lack of images of female urologists in AI will affect patients. “Our results highlight an existing bias, but ultimately, I don’t think this will change how we manage patients or how patients seek care,” she said.
DeMeo and Loeb reported no relevant financial conflicts of interest.
Howard Wolinsky is a medical journalist in Chicago.
