When It Comes to Gorillas, Google Photos Remains Blind (wired.com)

Tom Simonite, writing for Wired: In 2015, a black software developer embarrassed Google by tweeting that the company's Photos service had labeled photos of him with a black friend as "gorillas." Google declared itself "appalled and genuinely sorry." An engineer who became the public face of the clean-up operation said the label gorilla would no longer be applied to groups of images, and that Google was "working on longer-term fixes." More than two years later, one of those fixes is erasing gorillas, and some other primates, from the service's lexicon. The awkward workaround illustrates the difficulties Google and other tech companies face in advancing image-recognition technology, which the companies hope to use in self-driving cars, personal assistants, and other products. WIRED tested Google Photos using a collection of 40,000 images well-stocked with animals. It performed impressively at finding many creatures, including pandas and poodles. But the service reported "no results" for the search terms "gorilla," "chimp," "chimpanzee," and "monkey."

Comments

How does that work in practice?

[TimothyHollins]

More than two years later, one of those fixes is erasing gorillas, and some other primates, from the service's lexicon. The awkward workaround illustrates the difficulties Google and other tech companies face in advancing image-recognition technology, which the companies hope to use in self-driving cars, personal assistants, and other products.

So what do their cars do now when they spot a gorilla crossing the road?

Re:How does that work in practice?

[Solandri]

You're trying to be funny, but I think this highlights part of the problem. It's not necessarily Google's image recognition software, it's also poor photographs. A self-driving car (if it needed to distinguish between gorillas and black people) wouldn't have as much problem because it can adjust the camera's exposure to where it can see enough detail to distinguish the two. But a lot of photos of black people are taken with the wrong exposure, and the black skin tones end up crushed down into just a few discrete color values near black, or clipped to 0. The AI then ends up trying to distinguish one black humanoid-shaped blob from another.

When I shot weddings on film, I had to use special low contrast film (had a larger dynamic range). That was the only way to retain detail in both the bride's white dress and the groom's black tuxedo. And even then, if the wedding was held in sunlight a lot of the detail might still be unrecoverable. Modern cameras are getting around the problem with automatic HDR photo mode (takes two photos at different exposures to preserve detail in both the highlights and shadows, then combines them nonlinearly). But there's still a huge library of badly-exposed photos out there (from the pre-HDR days and being added to by current photographers taking simple snapshots without really caring about exposure), just waiting to trip up any image recognition AI.

White skin tends to be slightly brighter than the average background, while black skin tends to be much darker. So to properly expose a portrait of a black person, you have to either make sure their skin dominates the camera's auto-exposure algorithm, and not the background or their clothing. Or put additional light specifically on their face (e.g. fill flash) so it's not so dark relative to the background. A professional photographer knows this. The average person taking a snapshot, and the auto-exposure algorithm in their camera, does not.

Re:People look like apes, black people more so

[Baron_Yam]

It's like that recent H&M ad scandal with the little kid wearing a "Coolest monkey in the jungle" shirt. Kids get called monkeys all the time... when they're playing (especially climbing trees!) there's not a hell of a lot of difference between them and other young primates playing.

Because of (primarily) American racism issues, everyone assumes if you're calling a dark-skinned kid a 'monkey' you're trying to chain him and put him to work picking cotton. Same thing here - it's an understandable situation that gets people all bent out of shape because of shit that SHOULD be nothing but embarrassing history that died with our grandparents' generation.

Re:People look like apes, black people more so

[danbert8]

Considering the equivalent intelligence of a computer, mis-identifying a gorilla and a black person based on facial features alone isn't half bad... It's exactly something you'd expect from a low intelligence entity with little experience and limited comprehension of the ramifications of the identification. Similar to a toddler, don't be surprised when computers start thinking all fat people are going to have a baby just because they have been told that there is a baby inside a big belly.

It's pattern recognition. The computers are seeing a pattern, but it's incomplete and thus wrong. It's not like the computer was programmed to be offensive...

Why is his skin color even relevant?

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I'm as white as they come and Google Photos has tagged several monkeys in my pictures as me. Nobody is writing news stories about that (as well they shouldn't!), but because this guy is black the world ended ?

Few offended - many faked outrage

[FeelGood314]

You do not have the right not to be offended. Generally I shouldn't go out of my way to do something just to offend you but that's not even close to the case here. I seriously doubt many people were offended. I do however think a certain group of people used this as an opportunity to criticize google. This group of people care less about difficulties black people face than they do care about being seen about caring about black issues. There is a reason SJW is a derogatory term.

There are so many actual issues that black or native North Americans face where the solutions are actually hindered by SJWs. It is quite frustrating.

Re:It's not a "vision problem" - it's genetic real

[Baron_Yam]

1) IQ tests are extremely culturally biased. There may be average intelligence differences you could correlate with skin colour, but none we can currently measure, and certainly none significant enough to use to prejudge individual ability.

2) Koko is a fraud that has been debunked several times. Koko is amazing, but nowhere near the level of amazing that the involved researchers proclaim.

3) Reality isn't nice, but you're racist.

Re:In defense of Google

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone 5 standard deviations above average...

IQ, or pants size?

Re: People look like apes, black people more so

[sheramil]

Google, American. 'Porch monkey', American racial term. This story is all about American race relations.

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