Nationwide — The Google Photos app has apparently been labeling some pictures of African Americans as “gorillas”, and Google has officially apologized for what they say was an error in their software.Google spokeswoman Katie Watson commented, “We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened. We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”
One commenter on Huffington Post, “This ‘software issue’ is only possible when so few people of color are hired. No one to around in corporate leadership or product design or testing levels to help shape facial recognition to account for SKIN TONE VARIATION! This is the perfect example of institutional racism.”
Another top commenter said, “All they really had to do was beta test photos with people of all race.”
Google, who has had their issues in the past with diversity insensitivity, also made headlines last month when it was discovered that entering a racial slur into the search field on Google Maps would point to the White House.
Google, with other tech giants, has also been sharply criticized for not having enough minority and women employees. About 70 percent employees are reportly men, and 60 percent of their employees are white with 31 percent being Asian.African Americans and Latinos combined make up only 5 percent of their staff.