" alt="" title=""/>Facebook has mistakenly identified black men as primates – an animal – through its automatic facial recognition program.
When Facebook users saw a British tabloid video featuring black men in the past few days, they were automatically presented with a message asking if they would like to see more videos of primates.
The video in question was from the Daily Mail’s “White man calls cops to black men in the marina”. This video was originally posted on Facebook in June 2020. The problem with this prompt message is that there was no mention of a monkey or chimpanzee in the entire video.
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Recently, this issue was raised by Darci Groves, former content designer manager for Facebook, who went to Twitter to share a screenshot of the solicitation.
“That ‘look ahead’ invitation is unacceptable @Facebook,” tweeted Groves. “And although the video is over a year old, a friend received this request yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. That is monstrous. “
Ah. This invitation to look further is unacceptable, @Facebook. And even though the video is over a year old, a friend got this request yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. It is monstrous. pic.twitter.com/vEHdnvF8ui
– Darci Groves (@tweetsbydarci) September 2, 2021 ×
Once the issue was addressed, Facebook quickly disabled the AI software and apologized for the racial mess. “We apologize to everyone who has seen these offensive recommendations,” a Facebook statement was quoted by the AFP news agency.
Facebook has gone a step further and completely disabled the AI-controlled topic recommendation software. “We turned off the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we determined this was happening so we can investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again,” the statement said.
This is not the first time that Facebook has been criticized for the problematic content of the social media platform. Since 2020, several human rights activists and groups have been calling on Facebook to take concrete steps against hate speech and the spread of misinformation, especially since the death of George Floyd.
