An apology by Google follows quickly.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Google has been forced to apologize after its new Photos application identified black people as “gorillas.”
Jacky Alciné, 21, of Brooklyn checked his Google Photos account Sunday and found that the program had automatically generated and labeled a folder titled “Gorillas” for a photo of himself and a friend taken in 2013, reported Yahoo Tech.
Yontan Zunger, an engineer and the company’s chief architect of Google+, responded swiftly to Alciné on Twitter: “This is 100% Not OK.” And he promised that Google’s Photos team was working on a fix.
In a statement, Google spokeswoman Katie Watson said: “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.”
According to USA Today, Alciné responded on Twitter: “I understand HOW this happens; the problem is more so on the WHY.”
On Tuesday, Zunger confirmed via Twitter that the “gorilla” label had been removed from the app’s database but that the team still had work to do when the app didn’t recognize a human face—and he flatly confirmed that “lots still [needs] to be done” in terms of facial recognition; he specifically called out “dark-skinned faces” in that assessment.
He also noted that, “Until recently, [Google Photos] was confusing white faces with dogs and seals. Machine learning is hard.”
Brian Brackeen, CEO of facial recognition company Kairos, explained to Forbes that machines can make culturally inappropriate assumptions when not properly trained. “It’s scarily similar to how a child learns,” he offered.