Facebook has turned off its automated recommendation function after its users who have seen a clip about Africans has been advised to watch other “videos about primates”.
The recommendation was shown during a video from the British newspaper Daily Mail with the headline: “White man calls cops on black men at marina”. Several Facebook users, after watching the video were sent an automated message asking if they would like to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”
Facebook has apologized after a video featuring Black men was classified as a video featuring “primates” by the social network’s artificial intelligence software. A Facebook spokesperson called it a “clearly unacceptable error” and said the recommendation software involve was taken offline, writes Al-Jazeera.
After being made aware of the issue, the company disabled the A.I. feature responsible for the message and is investigating it for errors.
This is the latest in a long line of scandals in which automatic AI functions on various websites have proven to be “racist”. Often it is precisely about image recognition systems that identify Africans as monkeys.
Forsided, 06.09.2021