The tech giant said its models were “missing the mark” following controversy over their failure to portray white people.
Google temporarily stopped its Gemini AI model from generating images of people after backlash over its failure to depict white people.
The search engine giant made the announcement Thursday after Gemini users shared images created by models that primarily featured people of color, including historical scenes that only involved white people.
“Gemini's AI image generation generates a wide variety of people, which is generally a good thing since people all over the world are using it. But we miss the point here,” Google said on X. I mentioned it in the post.
“We are already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation capabilities,” the tech giant added. “While we do this, we will pause human image generation and re-release an improved version soon.”
Getting Google Gemini to acknowledge the existence of white people is embarrassingly difficult. pic.twitter.com/4lkhD7p5nR
— Dee Dee (@debarghya_das) February 20, 2024
An image created by Gemini that has been circulating on social media in recent days has sparked widespread ridicule and anger, with some users accusing Google of being “woke” for undermining truth and accuracy.
The images that drew criticism included depictions of four non-white Swedish women and scenes of Nazi soldiers of black and Asian descent.
“It's embarrassingly difficult to get Google Gemini to acknowledge the existence of white people,” Debarghya Das, founding engineer at enterprise search startup Glean, said in a post on X accompanied by a number of Gemini-generated images. .
AI models have also come under fire in the past for overlooking people of color or perpetuating stereotypes in results.
Google, which has been racing to catch up with rival OpenAI since introducing ChatGPT in 2022, has experienced many setbacks in its AI product rollout.
Last year, the tech giant apologized after its AI chatbot Bird incorrectly claimed during a demonstration that the James Webb Space Telescope had taken the first photo of a planet outside our solar system.
