AI Literacy Digital Inclusion and Perceived Legal Empowerment Potential in Bangladesh

Abstract Responsible access to artificial intelligence (AI) may help people locate and evaluate legal information, but endorsement of that possibility does not show that users have the resources or agency to act on it. This cross-sectional study distinguishes perceived empowerment potential from judgements about literacy, affordability, training and inclusive design. We analysed 385 adult responses to a common questionnaire on AI, gender, equality and law in Bangladesh. The analysis reports complete response distributions, joint endorsement, within-person comparisons and exploratory adjusted models. The proposition that responsible AI access can support legal awareness and empowerment was endorsed by 284 respondents (73.8%), compared with 209 (54.3%) for the importance of affordable digital access and 198 (51.4%) for the expected benefit of training for women's safe use of legal information. Within respondents, empowerment potential exceeded endorsement of the four more specific propositions by 16.1–22.3 percentage points (all Holm-adjusted p < 0.001). Of those who endorsed empowerment potential, 164 also endorsed affordability. Affordability was positively associated with the original empowerment rating after adjustment (b = 0.153, 95% CI 0.058 to 0.248; Holm-adjusted p = 0.005), but the association did not meet the adjusted threshold in binary or student-only sensitivity analyses. The findings support evaluating access conditions and legal outcomes separately. They do not measure women's actual agency, use of legal services, or the effect of improving affordability. The mixed sample does not establish national prevalence.