Flickr's auto-tagging labels black people "ape" and concentration camps "jungle gym"
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Source: theguardian.com ↗
If you delete an incorrect tag, our algorithm learns from that mistake and will perform better in the future.
Flickr's new auto-tagging system labelled a portrait of a black man named William with "animal" and "ape". Photos of Dachau concentration camp came back tagged "jungle gym" and "sport". The entrance to Auschwitz got "sport".
Yahoo shipped the feature on 7 May and called it "advanced image recognition technology". A comment thread about it collected almost 2,500 replies, the vast majority negative. Flickr pulled "ape" from the tagging lexicon entirely and left "animal" in place. A spokesperson said the process is completely automated, that no human ever views the photos, and that deleting an incorrect tag teaches the algorithm to perform better in future.