Google Lens’s Camera-Based Translation Feature Provided an Offensive Mistranslation of a Book Title in Korean

July 18, 2022

Korea's first minister of culture's book title was inappropriately translated by Google Lens due to its training on internet communications and lack of context. This underscores the need for trustworthy, safe, and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping responsible AI governance and mapping incidents like this within HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Measure or Manage function), JOIN US. Let's work together to establish guardrails for AI.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.652, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.647, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 3.4 — similarity 0.632, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: google
Alleged developer: google
Alleged harmed parties: google-lens-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/285

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.