Kannada Insulted by Google's Featured Answer as "Ugliest Language in India"

June 3, 2021

Google's knowledge-graph-powered algorithm, a key component of its featured Answer Box, has sparked outrage for displaying the label 'ugliest language in India' when prompted with the same phrase. The controversial incident involved Kannada, an official language of India, causing distress among Kannada-speaking individuals and authorities. This incident underscores the importance of safe and secure AI practices, emphasizing the need for responsible AI governance. To join the effort towards promoting trustworthy AI and mitigating such incidents through Project Cerebellum's HISPI TAIM (Govern), visit JOIN US.

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MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.609, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.1 — similarity 0.604, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.603, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: google
Alleged developer: google
Alleged harmed parties: the-karnataka-government, kannada-speakers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/401

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.