Incident 587: Apparent Failure to Accurately Label Primates in Image Recognition Software Due to Alleged Fear of Racial Bias

Description: Eight years after Google Photos mislabeled images of Black individuals as "gorillas," image recognition software by Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft still shows signs of either avoiding or inaccurately categorizing primates. Tests reveal that Google and Apple Photos refrain from labeling primates altogether, possibly to avoid the risk of perpetuating racial stereotypes. Microsoft OneDrive fails to identify any animals, while Amazon Photos overgeneralizes in its labeling.

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Alleged: Google , Apple , Amazon and Microsoft developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Consumers relying on accurate image categorization and members of racial and ethnic minorities who risk being stereotyped or misrepresented.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

587

Report Count

Incident Date

2023-05-22

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Google’s Photo App Still Can’t Find Gorillas. And Neither Can Apple’s

nytimes.com

nytimes.com · 2023

Eight years after a controversy over Black people being mislabeled as gorillas by image analysis software — and despite big advances in computer vision — tech giants still fear repeating the mistake.

When Google released its stand-alone Pho…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.