Facebook apologizes for tagging black man video as 'primate'

Facebook issued an apology statement on September 3, 2021 for identifying black male videos as 'primates' by AI, which identifies the content of the video and recommends similar videos to viewers. Facebook says it will disable the AI-based video recommendation feature in question until it can prevent a recurrence.

Facebook Apologizes After AI Puts'Primates' Label on Video of Black Men --The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/technology/facebook-ai-race-primates.html

Facebook says its AI mislabeling a video of Black men as “primates” was “unacceptable” --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/4/22657026/facebook-mislabeling-video-black-men-primates-algorithm

Many companies are actively developing and introducing AI that automatically discriminates content in order to provide convenient functions to users, but some AI have been accused of making racist judgments. There are also things. For example, Google's photo app has apologized for tagging black men and women's photos with 'gorilla,' and AI that sharpens mosaic images has taken a photo of former President Barack Obama.There has also been a great deal of controversy over the restoration of the face of a white man.

Developer apologizes for Google Photos recognizing blacks as gorillas-GIGAZINE

Following these cases, it was newly discovered that Facebook's video identification AI mistakenly tagged a black man's movie as 'primate.' The problem was that former Facebook employee Darci Groves said on Twitter, 'I can't accept the word' Keep seeing ', Facebook. This video is more than a year old, but I My friend found this sign yesterday. ' If you look at the image posted by Groves, you can see that at the bottom of the video showing a black man, 'Do you want to continue watching videos about primates?'

Um. This 'Keep Seeing' Prompt Is Unacceptable, AttoFacebook . And Despite The Video Being More Than A Year Old, A Friend Got This Prompt Yesterday. Friends At FB, Please Escalate. This Is Egregious. Pic.Twitter.Com/vEHdnvF8ui

— Darci Groves (@tweetsbydarci) September 2, 2021

According to foreign news media The New York Times, the video in question was uploaded to Facebook by British news media Daily Mail on June 27, 2020, with black men being police officers and white civilians. It is said that it contains the appearance of arguing.


A Facebook spokeswoman told IT news site The Verge, 'This is clearly an unacceptable error. We've been improving AI so far, but it wasn't perfect. We would like to apologize to those who have seen the unpleasant video recommendations. ' According to The Verge, Facebook has disabled the ability to recommend similar videos to viewers until the issue is resolved.