Google Gemini generates 'woke' racial images

Occurred: February 2024

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Google faced criticism from right-wing commentators for it's Gemini AI model being too 'woke' by being biased against white people.

Users pointed out that Gemini generated images depicting a variety of genders and ethnicities even when doing so was historically inaccurate. For example, a prompt seeking images of America's founding fathers turned up women and people of colour; another prompt showed much the same for Nazi-era German soldiers.

People questioned whether Gemini failed to produce historically accurate results in an attempt at reducing the risk of being accused of racial and gender discrimination. The controversy was first sparked by right-wing figures attacking Google for its seemingly liberal culture. 

Google acknowledged the issue, saying Gemini was 'missing the mark' and that it was being addressed. The company later suspended the bot, saying it tuned Gemini to be more diverse but had gone too far and made the bot cautious.'

Databank

Operator: Alphabet/Google
Developer: Alphabet/Google
Country: Global
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Generate images
Technology: Generative AI; Text-to-image
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Ethics/values; Historical revisionism
Transparency: Black box