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When Image Recognition Goes Horribly Wrong

posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the did-you-really-just-call-her-that? dept.

Beryllium Sphere (r) writes:

Google Photo tries to categorize your pictures automatically. Until very recently, it had a failure mode in which its classification for some pictures of humans was "Gorillas".

Google reacted [and apologised] very quickly when they got a complaint from a black woman who had been misclassified.

When Brooklyn-based computer programmer Jacky Alcine looked over a set of images that he had uploaded to Google Photos on Sunday, he found that the service had attempted to classify them according to their contents. Google offers this capability as a selling point of its service, boasting that it lets you, “Search by what you remember about a photo, no description needed.” In Alcine’s case, many of those labels were basically accurate: A photograph of an airplane wing had been filed under “Airplanes,” one of two tall buildings under “Skyscrapers,” and so on.

Then there was a picture of Alcine and a friend. They’re both black. And Google had labeled the photo “Gorillas.” On investigation, Alcine found that many more photographs of the pair—and nothing else—had been placed under this literally dehumanizing rubric.

Speculating, it's possible that their software is heavy on statistical matching and it's really hard to debug, which is why they wound up simply deleting "Gorilla" from the list of possible categories.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/30/google_s_image_recognition_software_returns_some_surprisingly_racist_results.html

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by malloc_free on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:11AM

    by malloc_free (3034) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:11AM (#203665) Journal

    ...and she was correctly identified as a 'crack whore'. Something is obviously working XD

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  • (Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:38AM

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:38AM (#203699)

    I got "Nubian princess" on my images,
    Gonna say google got it right for once.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:21PM (#203774)
      What's a Nubian? /banky

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:09AM (#203703)

    I was just giving soylent a second chance after being turned off by the juvenile troll shit that was taking hold here.

    This shit isn't funny, and fuck you.

    I'll check back in a few months and see if the community has grown up at all.

    (guess what race i am...)

    • (Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:00PM

      by deathlyslow (2818) <wmasmith@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:00PM (#203718)

      Try setting your thresholds higher.

    • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:07PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:07PM (#203764) Journal

      FFS, no one gives a damn what race you are. There are some pretty serious, informative posts here, and there are some juvenile bullshit posts here as well. I don't care WHAT race you claim to be, if you can't see the obvious, then you're dumber than a box of rocks.

      Don't like the stupid bullshit? Change your browsing settings. That, or grow a pair. That right to never be offended? That one is made-up bullshit. You don't HAVE any such right.

      Speaking of being offended - some of us are offended at your whining and sniveling.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:24PM (#203776)

      (guess what race i am...)

      ...crack whore?

    • (Score: 1) by malloc_free on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:17AM

      by malloc_free (3034) on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:17AM (#204025) Journal

      Ah ok was supposed to be a juvenile joke (kinda going for a Southpark thing), and at least I had the decency to not post as myself, not as AC. If you are to chicken shit to do the same, I for one will not lament your departure.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:41AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:41AM (#204056)

        Jokes like that reveal more about the teller than intended, mr non-anonymous "malloc_free."