Google Photos Still Has a Problem with Gorillas
In 2015, Google drew criticism when its Photos image recognition system mislabeled a black woman as a gorilla—but two years on, the problem still isn’t properly fixed. Instead, Google has censored image tags relating to many primates.
What’s new: Wired tested Google Photos again with a bunch of animal photos. The software could identify creatures from pandas to poodles with ease. But images of gorillas, chimps, and chimpanzees? They were never labeled. Wired confirmed with Google that those tags are censored.
But: Some of Google’s other computer vision systems, such as Cloud Vision, were able to correctly tag photos of gorillas and provide answers to users. That suggests the tag removal is a platform-specific shame-faced PR move.
Bigger than censorship: Human bias exists in data sets everywhere, reflecting the facets of humanity we’d rather not have machines learn. But reducing and removing that bias will take a lot more work than simply blacklisting labels.
Deep Dive
Artificial intelligence
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch
Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.
What’s next for generative video
OpenAI's Sora has raised the bar for AI moviemaking. Here are four things to bear in mind as we wrap our heads around what's coming.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.