Incident 16: Images of Black People Labeled as Gorillas
Entities
View all entitiesIncident Stats
CSET Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsFull Description
Google's Google Photo image processing software "mistakenly labelled a black couple as being 'gorillas.'" The error occurred in the software's image processing that attempts to assign themes to groups of similar photos. In this example, the suggested themes were "Graduation, Bikes, Planes, Skyscrapers, Cars, and Gorillas."
Short Description
Google Photos image processing software mistakenly labelled a black couple as "gorillas."
Severity
Minor
Harm Distribution Basis
Race
Harm Type
Psychological harm, Harm to social or political systems
AI System Description
Google's Google Photo Image Processing
System Developer
Sector of Deployment
Arts, entertainment and recreation
Relevant AI functions
Perception, Cognition
AI Techniques
image classification
AI Applications
image processing, facial recognition, image classification
Location
Global
Named Entities
Google, Google Photos
Technology Purveyor
Beginning Date
2015-06-29
Ending Date
2015-06-29
Near Miss
Harm caused
Intent
Accident
Lives Lost
No
Data Inputs
photographs, images, multi-media content
GMF Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsKnown AI Goal
Image Tagging
Known AI Technology
Face Detection, Convolutional Neural Network, Keyword Filtering
Known AI Technical Failure
Underfitting
Potential AI Technical Failure
Dataset Imbalance, Context Misidentification
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline

Google has removed the 'gorilla' tag from its new Photos app, after a user noticed it had filed a number of photos of him and his black friend in an automatically generated album named 'gorillas'.
The affected user, computer programmer Jack…

Google’s image recognition algorithm is labelling photos of black people as gorillas and putting them into a special album.
The automatic recognition software is intended to spot characteristics of photos and sort them together — so that al…

Mr Alcine tweeted Google about the fact its app had misclassified his photo
Google says it is "appalled" that its new Photos app mistakenly labelled a black couple as being "gorillas".
Its product automatically tags uploaded pictures using …

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; …

Google has come under fire recently for an objectively racist “glitch” found in its new Photos application for iOS and Android that is identifying black people as "gorillas."
In theory, Photos is supposed to act like an intelligent digital …

Google has apologized after its new photo app labelled two black people as “gorillas”.
The photo service, launched in May, automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software.
“Google Photos, y’all fucked up.…

Google has been forced to apologise after its image recognition software mislabelled photographs of black people as gorillas.
The internet giant's new Google Photos application uses an auto-tagging feature to help organise images uploaded t…

Story highlights Google Photos tagged an African-American man's pictures of him and a friend as "Gorillas"
He highlighted the problem on Twitter, drawing the attention of a Google engineer
(CNN) When Jacky Alcine looked at his Google Photos…

Google has said it is "genuinely sorry" after its image recognition software labelled photographs of a black couple as "gorillas".
The Google Photos application, launched in May, uses an automatic tagging tool to help organise uploaded imag…
Google is a leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning. But the company’s computers still have a lot to learn, judging by a major blunder by its Photos app this week.
The app tagged two black people as “Gorillas,” according to J…
Google launched its Photos app at Google I/O in May. Here staffers wait to check in conference attendees at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. (Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO — Google has apologized after its new Photos…

Google has come under fire after the image-recognition feature in its Photos application mistakenly identified people with dark skin as "gorillas."
Jacky Alciné of New York City tweeted a picture of himself and a friend on Sunday that the a…

Google was quick to respond over the weekend to a user after he tweeted that the new Google Photos app had mis-categorized a photo of him and his friend in an unfortunate and offensive way.
Jacky Alciné, a Brooklyn computer programmer of Ha…

When Brooklyn-native Jacky Alcine logged onto Google Photos on Sunday evening, he was shocked to find an album titled “Gorillas,” in which the facial recognition software categorized him and his friend as primates. Immediately, Alcine poste…

Google continued to apologize Wednesday for a flaw in Google Photos, which was released to great fanfare in May, that led the new application to mistakenly label photos of black people as “gorillas.”
The company said it had fixed the proble…

When Jacky Alciné checked his Google Photos app earlier this week, he noticed it labeled photos of himself and a friend, both black, as “gorillas.”
The Brooklyn programmer posted his screenshots to Twitter to call out the app’s faulty photo…

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Google had a major PR disaster on its hands thanks to …

In 2015, Google drew criticism when its Photos image recognition system mislabeled a black woman as a gorilla—but two years on, the problem still isn’t properly fixed. Instead, Google has censored image tags relating to many primates.
What’…

In 2015, a black software developer embarrassed Google by tweeting that the company’s Photos service had labeled photos of him with a black friend as “gorillas.” Google declared itself “appalled and genuinely sorry.” An engineer who became …

It’s been over two years since engineer Jacky Alciné called out Google Photos for auto-tagging black people in his photos as “gorillas.” After being called out, Google promptly and profusely apologized, promising it’d fix the problems in th…

Two years later, Google solves 'racist algorithm' problem by purging 'gorilla' label from image classifier
In 2015, a black software developer named Jacky Alciné revealed that the image classifier used by Google Photos was labeling black pe…

Google’s ‘immediate action’ over AI labelling of black people as gorillas was simply to block the word, along with chimpanzee and monkey, reports suggest
This article is more than 1 year old
This article is more than 1 year old
After Google…

tech2 News Staff
Do you remember the time when Google’s image recognition algorithm created a major controversy after it categorised a black couple as “Gorillas”?
If you don’t then we don’t blame you as this actually happened back in July 2…
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