Facebook said that it disabled its topic recommendation feature after the AI mistook black men in a video shared on the platform for “primates,” raising controversy.
Facebook users who watched the video were shown an auto-generated prompt asking if they would like to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”
“We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations,” Facebook said in response to an AFP inquiry.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, the recommendation software was taken offline for this “clearly unacceptable error,” AFP reports.
Civil rights activists have been criticizing facial recognition software, pointing out problems with accuracy, particularly when it comes to people of color.
Darci Groves, former head of content design at Facebook, shared a screenshot of the prompt on her Twitter account, stating “this ‘keep watching’ notice is unacceptable… This is outrageous.”
Facebook has been at the center of several controversies in recent years.
Following the death of George Floyd in police custody in 2020, hundreds of advertisers signed on to the Stop Hate for Profit campaign to pressure Facebook into taking concrete steps to block hate speech and misinformation on the platform.
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