Google Photos Mislabels 2 Black Americans as Gorillas

Yahoo: The image recognition software built into Google Photos is impressive. Show it a photo of the Eiffel Tower, and it will know that picture was taken in Paris. Snap an image of a dog or a tree, and it will automatically put them in a group with all your other pictures of dogs or trees.

But the software is far from foolproof. And when it fails, it does so in a spectacular way — as when it recently processed a photo of two black friends and labeled them “Gorillas.”

Jacky Alcine, a 21-year old programmer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., was checking out his Google Photos account last night when he saw that the service had automatically generated a folder titled “Gorillas.” It contained nothing but pictures of him and a friend that he had taken in 2013.

When alerted to the error, Google provided a solution to the problem within hours and issued an immediate mea culpa.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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