Twitter apologizes for racist algorithm that erases black people

Twitter has apologised for a “racist” image cropping algorithm, after users discovered the feature was automatically focusing on white faces over black ones.

Users began to spot flaws in the feature over the weekend. The first to highlight the issue was PhD student Colin Madland, who discovered the issue while highlighting a different racial bias in the video-conference software Zoom.

When Madland, who is white, posted an image of himself and a black colleague who had been erased from a Zoom call after its algorithm failed to recognise his face, Twitter automatically cropped the image to only show Madland.

Others followed up with more targeted experiments, including entrepreneur Tony Arcieri, who discovered that the algorithm would consistently crop an image of US senator Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama to hide the former president.

In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson admitted the company had work to do. “Our team did test for bias before shipping the model and did not find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing. But it’s clear from these examples that we’ve got more analysis to do.
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