Apparent Failure to Accurately Label Primates in Image Recognition Software Due to Alleged Fear of Racial Bias
May 22, 2023
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.
- Alleged deployer
- google, apple, amazon, microsoft
- Alleged developer
- google, apple, amazon, microsoft
- Alleged harmed parties
- consumers-relying-on-accurate-image-categorization, members-of-racial-and-ethnic-minorities-who-risk-being-stereotyped-or-misrepresented
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/587
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
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