Google Photos Mislabels Black Individuals as 'Gorillas': A Case for Responsible AI

In an incident demonstrating the need for robust AI governance, Google's Photo application inadvertently labeled several photos of black individuals as 'gorillas'. The affected images were then categorized into a separate folder. This unfortunate occurrence underscores the importance of safe and secure AI, emphasizing the need for guardrails to prevent such incidents.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.506, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 3.5 — similarity 0.506, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.490, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/16

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.