Google has temporarily suspended the operations of its AI Gemini artificial intelligence following controversy over racially charged images it produced. The U.S. tech giant has already temporarily blocked its new artificial intelligence model that generated images of German soldiers from World War II and Vikings as people of color, a different race from their original depiction.
The technology company stated it would suspend the Gemini model generating images of people after social media users posted examples of images produced by the tool depicting historical figures of various ethnicities and genders.
“We are working to address the issues with the Gemini image creation feature. While we do this, we will temporarily suspend the creation of images of people and will soon release an improved version,” Google said in a statement to X.
Google did not reference any specific images in its statement. However, examples of Gemini image outputs are widely available on X, accompanied by commentary on accuracy issues and AI bias.
On Wednesday (2/21), senior director on Google’s Gemini team, Jack Krawczyk, acknowledged that adjustments were needed for this image model generator.
“We are working to rectify representations like these promptly,” he said, citing The Guardian.
“The Gemini AI image generation indeed produces a variety of people. And that’s generally a good thing, as people worldwide use it. But it’s off the mark here,” he added.
Krawczyk further stated in a statement to X that Google’s AI principles guided its image-making tool to “reflect our global user base.”
He also added that Google would continue to do this for “open” image requests like “someone walking a dog” but acknowledged that responses to historically biased requests required further improvement.
“Historical context has more nuances, and we will further adjust to accommodate that,” he said.
According to The Verge, Google began offering image generation through the AI Gemini platform (previously Bard) earlier this month, chasing features offered by competitors like OpenAI.
