"A new study in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science surveyed 200 women micro-entrepreneurs in Bengaluru and reported that 32.5% of them are “actively using at least one AI-enabled tool” in their businesses. The tools, according to the paper, include KhataBook (a digital ledger), WhatsApp Business auto-replies, Canva, and Facebook’s “best time to post” suggestions. None of those, as the women in the study experience them, are artificial intelligence. The underlying research is not the problem. The Bengaluru paper makes a genuinely useful finding: women adopt digital tools when trusted NGO intermediaries provide sustained, peer-based training, and they abandon those tools when training is one-off or absent. That finding has been the consensus in ICT4D since Heeks established it in 2010. What is new is the label. The paper describes a digital literacy intervention and calls it AI empowerment, and a peer-reviewed journal accepted that framing. This is not an isolated drafting error. It is the development sector’s pixie dust. Call something, anything “artificial intelligence” and donor money rains down from the sky." (Introduction)