AI Bias Exposure: New Zealand Passport Website Rejects Asian Applicant's Photo

An unfortunate incident occurred when an individual of Asian descent was denied a passport due to the facial recognition system on the official New Zealand government website. The system rejected his application because it identified his eyes as 'closed'. This highlights the importance of responsible AI, safe and secure AI, and trustworthy AI governance in preventing such harm.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.453, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.2 — similarity 0.453, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.452, 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.