Facebook Issues Apology After AI Software Labels Black Men As ‘Primates’

Facebook issued an apology after its artificial intelligence software mislabeled a video of Black men as “primates.”

First reported on by The New York Times, the post in question involved a video uploaded by the Daily Mail on June 27, 2020. In the video, a white man calls the cops on a group of Black men celebrating a birthday. “I’m being harassed by a bunch of Black men,” the man can be heard saying to a 911 operator. The video then abruptly cuts to a video of a Black man being arrested by police at his home.  

A former Facebook employee tweeted about the offensive misidentification on Thursday. Darci Groves wrote that a friend had experienced the suggestion firsthand.

“Um. This “keep seeing” prompt is unacceptable, @Facebook. And despite the video being more than a year old, a friend got this prompt yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. This is egregious,” she wrote. 

Um. This “keep seeing” prompt is unacceptable, @Facebook. And despite the video being more than a year old, a friend got this prompt yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. This is egregious. pic.twitter.com/vEHdnvF8ui

— Darci Groves (@tweetsbydarci) September 2, 2021

She included a screenshot from the video, along with the Facebook prompt asking, “Keeping seeing videos about primates?”

Facebook apologized for the error and has disabled the topic recommendation feature. The social media giant is looking into what caused the issue. 

“As we have said, while we have made improvements to our AI, we know it’s not perfect, and we have more progress to make,” Facebook said in a statement to the Times. “We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations.”