Google Photos App Tags Dark Skinned People As Gorillas

Is this a new kind of faux pas or something? Surely it goes to show that computers and the algorithms that run them are not all that smart, so we can heave a collective sigh of relief that something like Skynet will probably not happen – just yet, anyways. After all, when you have an app like Google Photos offering automatic tagging, you would expect it to make your life much easier when it comes to storing and sorting out your photos. However, when the automatic tagging feature categorizes photos wrongly, it can be a headache searching for that shot. Especially when you or your mates are dark skinned, and they have been tagged as a “Gorilla”.

This is what happened as reported by a Google Photos user known as Jacky Alciné. This is definitely one of the most embarrassing bugs by Google, as the Google Photos app auto-tagged photos of Alciné’s dark-skinned girlfriend by placing the “Gorilla” tag on her. Thankfully, Yonathan Zunger, Chief Social Architect at Google, was quick to mend bridges, by issuing an apology for the mistake while ensuring the matter is escalated over to the Google Photos team so that this bug will be removed – for good, hopefully.

Zunger has also admitted that the facial recognition feature does have a long way to go before it becomes useful and does not cause such a situation to occur in the future.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Google, google photos