Gender Gaps in AI Literacy — UNSW's Day of AI Workshop Study on Deepfake Awareness

Researchers from UNSW Sydney and Day of AI Australia ran a single-day AI-literacy workshop with students in Years 7, 8 and 10 at two co-educational New South Wales government schools, surveying 199 students before the workshop and 136 after it. The workshop covered core AI concepts alongside a module on deepfakes and online safety.

Measure gendered differences in AI knowledge, confidence and career interest before and after a short AI-literacy intervention, including awareness of deepfakes and online safety.

All participating students received the same one-day workshop; there was no random assignment to a treatment and control group. Pre- and post-workshop surveys were administered, and a companion analysis by the same team was published in Springer's peer-reviewed proceedings.

Before the workshop, boys reported significantly higher interest in AI, computer science and engineering careers, while girls were more likely to already use AI tools for schoolwork and to seek advice from them; boys were also significantly more likely to say they had created or shared deepfake content. After the workshop, both genders gained AI knowledge, but girls showed a wider spread of gains — stronger conceptual understanding, higher confidence, and a bigger rise in AI/CS career interest — partially narrowing the pre-existing gender gap in STEM aspiration.

The study is a single-day intervention with real attrition between pre- and post-surveys (199 to 136 respondents) and covers only two schools, so the findings speak to short-term shifts in attitudes and self-reported knowledge rather than durable learning or career outcomes.