Incident: Alleged Misidentification by Microsoft's Algorithm in News Story - Emphasizing Trustworthy AI

June 6, 2020

An incident occurred where a news story published on MSN.com mistakenly featured a photo of the wrong mixed-race person, allegedly chosen by an algorithm. This AI misstep underscores the importance of trustworthy and responsible AI, especially as Microsoft transitioned from human journalists to AI systems.

This AI incident maps to the Govern function in HISPI Project Cerebellum Trusted AI Model (TAIM). Join us in advocating for safe and secure AI governance JOIN US.
Alleged deployer
microsoft, msn.com
Alleged developer
microsoft
Alleged harmed parties
jade-thirlwall, leigh-anne-pinnock

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/127

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.