AI Bias Alert: New Zealand Passport Photo Checker Misidentifies Asian User

An incident involving the New Zealand passport photo checker has highlighted the risks of AI bias. The system, designed to verify passport photos, incorrectly identified an Asian user's picture as invalid due to a presumed 'closed eyes.' This underscores the importance of responsible AI governance and trustworthy AI models in ensuring safe and secure AI applications.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.2 — similarity 0.472, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.456, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.453, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/48

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.