Facebook’s AI mistakes black men for monkeys
Facebook’s artificial intelligence did its job (very) poorly on a video by mistaking black men for monkeys. The social network has apologized.
The video, published last year by British tabloid Daily Mail, is titled “A white man calls the cops against black men at the marina”. The moment comes when black men appear and Facebook posts the message “Continue to watch primate videos?” “, prompting the user to accept or decline.
Darci Groves, former head of content design at Facebook, said a friend recently sent him a screenshot of the post below the video. She then posted it on a forum that is intended for current and former Facebook employees. In response, an official at Facebook Watch, the company’s video department, called the situation“Unacceptable” and stated that the company “Investigated the root cause”.
Facebook has also reacted in an “official” and public manner, with the New York Times. “As we said, although we have made improvements to our artificial intelligence, we know that it is not perfect and that we still have some progress to make. We apologize to those who may have seen these offensive recommendations ”.
This is not the first time that artificial intelligence has confused black people with animals. A few years ago, the Google Photos service put the label “gorillas” on a photo of a black man and woman. Google had apologized after a controversy that appeared on social networks.
