Kids' AI-powered smartwatch racially insults Chinese people
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Occurred: August 2024
Page published: January 2025
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A popular children's smartwatch sparked outrage in China due to its racially insulting responses directed at Chinese people.ย
What happened
What happened
A parent in Henan Province shared a post on social media revealing that the 360 Kid's Smartwatch responded to a question about whether Chinese are the smartest people in the world with derogatory comments.ย
The watch made offensive remarks about physical features of Chinese people and questioned the authenticity of China's historical inventions, such as the compass and gunpowder, suggesting that these were fabricated and actually invented by Westerners.ย
The post quickly gained traction and led to widespread condemnation on Chinese social media platforms, where users expressed concerns about the potential influence of such technology on children and its implications for national pride and identity.
Why it happened
Why it happened
The smartwatch's offensive remarks were attributed to its reliance on public information sourced from the internet, rather than being generated by sophisticated AI algorithms.ย
Zhou Hongyi, the founder of the 360 company, said that the content was not AI-generated in the traditional sense but was pulled from various online sources.ย
He also announced that they would rectify the issue by removing harmful content and updating the software to improve accuracy and mitigate "AI hallucinations," where AI creates misleading or incorrect information.
What it means
What it means
The incident highlights the difficulties in controlling AI technologies and their outputs, particularly in a context like China, where there is significant emphasis on maintaining a specific narrative around history and identity.ย
The backlash against the smartwatch's comments also reflects broader societal concerns about rmisinformation and the potential for AI and related technologies to influence young minds negatively.
Hallucination (artificial intelligence)
In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a hallucination or artificial hallucination (also called bullshitting, confabulation or delusion) is a response generated by AI that contains false or misleading information presented as fact.
Source: Wikipedia ๐
System ๐ค
System ๐ค
Developer: 360
Country: China
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Entertain children
Technology: Machine learning
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Bias/discrimination
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