Twitter's image-cropping algorithm consistently framed white faces over Black ones
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: theguardian.com ↗
Our team did test for bias before shipping the model and did not find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing.
Twitter's automatic image cropper preferred white faces. Over the weekend of 19 September 2020, users ran the feature through a series of side-by-side tests and found it consistently cropped out Black subjects: Barack Obama disappeared from a photo alongside Mitch McConnell, Carl disappeared beside Lenny, and a black labrador disappeared beside a golden one.
The first catch came from PhD student Colin Madland, who posted a picture of himself and a Black colleague to illustrate a separate bias problem in Zoom, where the colleague's face had been erased from a video call. Twitter's preview showed Madland alone. The company said it had tested the model for bias before shipping and "did not find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing," then promised to open source its analysis so others could replicate it.