From health to hair care, the experts broke down exactly how artificial intelligence is shaping Black futures and why we can’t afford to sit this one out.
“AI is here — let’s not be afraid of it,” said Josette Gbemudu, Associate Vice President of Patient Health Innovation at Merck & Co., during a forward-thinking panel at the 2025 ESSENCE Festival of Culture in New Orleans.
On Friday, July 4, inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, attendees gathered for the “Artificial Intelligence: What You Need To Know To Prepare For The Future And Now” conversation on the Global Black Economic Forum stage. The panel, moderated by Chike Aguh, Senior Advisor to Project Workforce at Harvard, brought together leading voices in health, beauty, and tech to break down how artificial intelligence is already impacting our lives and what we can do to shape its future.
“We are at the beginning of this technology and we need to start having the conversations now,” Aguh said. He compared the current moment in AI to the dawn of the internet in the ’90s, emphasizing that both the promise and the peril of this technology are real. “The power to dictate what the future looks like is in our hands,” he added.
Kicking things off, Gbemudu made it clear that AI is no longer a futuristic idea; it’s here, and it’s transforming how we understand and manage health. “The promise of AI is limitless. It’s boundless,” she said. From early diagnoses to personalized treatment plans tailored to our genetics and lifestyle, Gbemudu walked attendees through how AI is driving real-time progress in healthcare. She pointed to sobering statistics, like the 40% higher mortality rate from breast cancer among Black women. She explained how digital tools powered by AI are helping women better understand their risks and take action earlier. “Let’s use the information that is derived from AI to take better control of our health,” she urged.
That sense of empowerment carried over as Rahquel Purcell, Chief Transformation Officer at L’Oréal North America, took the mic. Speaking from the front lines of the beauty industry, she described how AI is being used to analyze everything from the health of your skin to the age of each hair on your scalp. The goal? To create more personalized beauty experiences that reflect the diversity of real people. “For those of us who’ve had different years of processing and experimentation with our hair… different parts of your hair have different health, different maturity,” she said. And that matters — especially when designing products for different races, climates and lifestyles.
Purcell emphasized that AI won’t replace people, but it will change how we work, and those who embrace it will be better positioned to thrive. “The opportunity to have a breath of data and information for you, so I’m putting it back to you, because the importance of you taking ownership for your everyday experience, what you’re eating, how you are taking care of your body, what you are putting on your skin, how you are taking care of your hair,” she tells the audience. “There is such power and opportunity in that. But we have to get curious. We have to stay curious and feel the sense of ownership for these aspects of and the power of AI.”
Closing out the conversation was Esosa Osa, founder of Onyx Impact, who reminded the audience that AI can reinforce systemic bias if we don’t build tools with our communities in mind. “AI is already determining the news that we see, AI is already determining who we hire. AI is already determining our healthcare,” she said. That’s why her organization created “Aisha,” a culturally-grounded AI assistant trained on Black news, Black joy and Black history. “If we’re not building our own AI systems, someone else will be building them for us or building them against us,” she warned.
The conversation was a call to action, one that encouraged everyone in the room to lean in and stay informed. Whether it’s accessing health resources, choosing beauty products or engaging with the news, AI is already influencing the decisions we make. As the panelists made clear, we have the power to shape how this technology shows up in our lives.
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