Microsoft’s Algorithm Allegedly Selected Photo of the Wrong Mixed-Race Person Featured in a News Story

June 6, 2020

A recent news story on MSN.com mistakenly featured a photo of the wrong mixed-race individual, allegedly chosen by an algorithm. This incident underscores the importance of safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping governance around such incidents, explore HISPI Project Cerebellum's TAIM (Measure) function.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.661, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.658, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.652, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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.