Google has temporarily shut down its artificial intelligence image generator “Gemini” after online backlash erupted over the tool’s seeming bias against white men.
The tech giant’s attempt to catch up with rival company OpenAI hit a snag earlier this week after the company debuted its new AI, which appeared to some to have all the hallmarks of a tool trained on critical race theory and anti-white bias.
Gemini AI caught the public’s attention after the tool began depicting white historical figures as people of color. In fact, the tool made it nearly impossible for users to generate images of white men organically. For example, in a viral post shared by social media user @EndWokeness, Catholic popes, Vikings, and America’s founding fathers were all depicted as people of color.
“We’re aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions,” Google said in a statement, per Fox Business.
The backlash grew so big that a Google executive reportedly contacted Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), to offer assurances that the company was taking corrective action to address the AI’s bias.
“A senior exec at Google called and spoke to me for an hour last night,” said Musk. “He assured me that they are taking immediate action to fix the racial and gender bias in Gemini. Time will tell.”
The disastrous rollout of the new tool put some of the company’s leaders in the spotlight over their past purportedly anti-white statements and social media.
For instance, the senior director of product management for Gemini, Jack Krawczyk, 40, has published numerous social media posts expressing his disdain for white men.
“The Google Gemini (WokeAI) guy had a thread ranting about white privilege. I wonder where the tool’s Woke bias came from?” wrote a social media user with the handle @TheRabbitHole84 in a post on X.
Other social media users also chimed in.
“This guy should lose his job yesterday. He has made Gemini a laughing stock!” wrote social media user @OpposingViews.
Another Google employee to catch flak was Jen Gennai, Google’s AI ethics and compliance advisor and the former founder/director of Google Responsible Innovation.
Cultural commentator Matt Walsh highlighted Gennai’s admitted history of not treating all of her employees the same regardless of race. In her capacity at Google, Gennai was responsible for ensuring the company met its AI principles and ethical charter for developing and deploying fair, “inclusive,” and ethical advanced technologies … “to ensure they didn’t cause unintended or harmful consequences to the billions of Google’s users.”
When Fox News Digital asked Gemini to show a picture of a white person, the AI responded by saying it could not fulfill the request because it “reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race.”
“It’s important to remember that people of all races are individuals with unique experiences and perspectives. Reducing them to a single image based on their skin color is inaccurate and unfair,” Gemini said, Fox Business reported.
Google’s massive misstep not only set the company further behind OpenAI but also may have made it easier for other AI platforms like Grok to compete.
“I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilizational programming clear to all,” said Musk, the owner of Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI.
“Perhaps it is now clear why @xAI’s Grok is so important. It is far from perfect right now, but will improve rapidly,” Musk said in a separate social media post. “V1.5 releases in 2 weeks. Rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to criticism, has never been more essential.”
The Dallas Express reached through Google’s media team to ask Gennai if she really was as anti-racist as she seemed to tout herself to be, and if so, why she had not given up her job to someone in a minority group. No response was received by press time.