Sport, Education and Society

Boom or Doom—for Whom? Artificial Intelligence and Social Justice in Sport and Physical Education

Based on critical discussions of the ethical risks of artificial intelligence (AI) in sport (Carrio Sampedro, 2021) and the technological promises surrounding AI (Millington et al., 2025), this Special Issue examines the interaction between AI, social inequality, and the governance of bodies in sport and physical education.

Greater access to AI does not ensure more equitable opportunities for learning and participation. For example, if a school uses AI to assess throwing technique, what standards are applied to a student who throws from a wheelchair, and can the student challenge the resulting grade? Likewise, if a sports club uses an AI system trained mainly on boys’ performance records to select girls for a football development programme, could it treat boys’ speed and strength as the standard for athletic potential? How might these assessments shape girls’ access to advanced coaching and competition, and what opportunities would they have to challenge the club’s selection decisions?

These questions concern not only the accuracy of AI assessments but also the conditions under which ability is developed, recognised, and rewarded. We invite contributions that examine the risks and unequal consequences of AI in sport and physical education, as well as efforts to challenge exclusion. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Class, labour, and Global North–South inequalities in AI-supported physical education and sport. We welcome research on commercial interests, teachers’ and coaches’ working conditions, and control over data and infrastructure, including how benefits, risks, and environmental costs are distributed within and between countries.

• Gender and sexuality in AI-generated representations and AI-assisted teaching, coaching, and assessment. We invite studies of how sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia shape these practices, including the implications of sex and gender classifications for LGBTQ+ and intersex participants’ privacy, recognition, and participation.

• Race, ethnicity, migration, and religion in AI-mediated physical education curricula and sporting selection. Contributions may examine racialised assumptions about ability, effort, and risk, the experiences of refugees, migrants, and religious minorities, and institutional responses to racism and discrimination.

• Disability, neurodiversity, age, and body size in AI-supported physical education and sport. We encourage case studies of ableism, ageism, and weight stigma that examine the relationship between bodily experience and institutional expectations, including questions of accessibility, consent, and bodily autonomy.

• Colonial legacies and Indigenous knowledge in AI-supported physical education and sport. We welcome research on how AI may reproduce or challenge colonial hierarchies in curricula and assessment, and on Indigenous communities’ efforts to determine whether and how their movement traditions, languages, and bodily knowledge are collected, represented, and used.

Moreover, we particularly welcome intersectional analyses that examine how these forms of inequality interact within AI systems and institutional practices. Rather than viewing students, athletes, teachers, coaches, and communities as passive recipients of technological change, the Special Issue foregrounds their agency by asking how they negotiate, contest, and reshape AI-based assessment, classification, and decision-making practices. Beyond these critical studies, we also encourage articles examining constructive efforts to address these inequalities, including attempts to redesign technological systems, develop participatory forms of AI governance, and create institutional conditions that enable more equitable opportunities for learning and participation.