The story begins in June 2015. Software engineer Jacky Alciné posted a screenshot on Twitter showing Google Photos algorithms confusing black people with gorillas. It’s a shame for an app like Google Photos that has been downloaded over a billion times. Faced with this confusion that could easily be attributed to racism, the company later cite a “error” and promised to fix the problem. Three years after the incident, Google finally fixed its algorithm. Or almost…
Google Photos can no longer identify gorillas to avoid racial confusion
As Wired shows, the Mountain View firm removed gorillas from its image recognition algorithm to prevent Google Photos from confusing black people with gorillas. In fact, we can deduce Google chose to restrict its service Rather than solving the problem in depth by teaching its AI to distinguish between apes and humans.
Wired ran tests on tens of thousands of monkey photos to confirm its finding. Baboons, gibbons, and other marmosets are accurately identified. On the other hand, gorillas and chimpanzees are no longer recognized. Also, searching for keywords like “black man” or “black woman” is no longer possible. Google has confirmed that image categories for monkeys have been blocked since the incident in 2015. According to a company spokesperson, image recognition technology isn’t perfect yet, and Google hasn’t come up with a better alternative.
Google Photos, you’re all fucked. My friend is not a gorilla. pic.twitter.com/SMkMCsNVX4
— Jacky Alcine (@jackyalcine) 29 June 2015
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