Facebook labels video of Black Men as 'primates', issues apology after backlash

In another case of artificial intelligence gone wrong, Facebook came under severe backlash for labelling videos of Black men as 'primates'. The controversy came to the fore after Facebook users watched a video posted by The Daily Mail, which showed Black men in altercations with white civilians and police officers at Marina.

After a user finished watching the clip, an automated message asking for feedback on his viewing preference popped up. While Facebook often asks for feedback to improve a user's feed and recommendations, controversy erupted over the AI algorithm's message on the video of Black men. The automated message asked, 'Keep seeing videos about primates?'. The video dated June 27, 2020, had no connection to monkeys or primates.

After the incident came to light, Facebook issued an apology for putting the 'primate' label onto videos of Black men stating that it had turned off the artificial intelligence feature.

In a statement to New York Times, Facebook called the mistake “an unacceptable error” and promised to investigate the artificial intelligence feature further. A company spokesperson said that even though Facebook has made improvements to its artificial intelligence, “it’s not perfect” and has “more progress to make.”

Google Photos labels Black people as 'gorillas'

This is not the first time that artificial intelligence has mislabeled people of colour. In 2015, Google apologized after it labelled a photo of two Black people as gorillas. Google Photos had to censor the word 'gorilla' from its searches after users complained that their black friends were being labelled as 'gorillas' in their images. Issuing an apology over its 'racist AI', Google said that it was 'genuinely sorry' and would work towards correcting its algorithm.