Google Photos Identifies Two Black People as 'Gorillas'
Google Photos uses sophisticated facial-recognition software to identify not only individuals, but also specific categories of objects and photo types, like food, cats and skylines.
Image recognition programs are far from perfect, however; they sometimes gets things comically wrong, and sometimes offensively so — as one Twitter user recently found out.
Browsing his Google Photos app, Brooklyn resident Jacky Alciné noticed that photos of him and a friend, both of whom are black, were tagged under the label "Gorillas." He shared a screencap of the racist label on Twitter, which was spotted by Slate.
Yonatan Zunger, Google's chief social architect, responded quickly
In a subsequent tweetstorm, Zunger said Google was scrambling a team together to address the issue, and the label was removed from his app within 15 hours, Alciné confirmed to Mashable. Zunger said Google was looking at longer-term fixes, too. A Google spokesperson also sent an official statement:
“We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened. We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”
Image recognition programs are far from perfect, however; they sometimes gets things comically wrong, and sometimes offensively so — as one Twitter user recently found out.
Browsing his Google Photos app, Brooklyn resident Jacky Alciné noticed that photos of him and a friend, both of whom are black, were tagged under the label "Gorillas." He shared a screencap of the racist label on Twitter, which was spotted by Slate.
Google Photos, y'all fucked up. My friend's not a gorilla. pic.twitter.com/SMkMCsNVX4
— diri noir avec banan (@jackyalcine) June 29, 2015
Yonatan Zunger, Google's chief social architect, responded quickly
Like I understand HOW this happens; the problem is moreso on the WHY.
This is how you determine someone's target market.
— diri noir avec banan (@jackyalcine) June 29, 2015
In a subsequent tweetstorm, Zunger said Google was scrambling a team together to address the issue, and the label was removed from his app within 15 hours, Alciné confirmed to Mashable. Zunger said Google was looking at longer-term fixes, too. A Google spokesperson also sent an official statement:
“We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened. We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”
Google Photos Identifies Two Black People as 'Gorillas'
Reviewed by Msl
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Reviewed by Msl
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