Google suspends Geminis picture tool in response to criticism

Recently, Google's Gemini faced criticism due to its incapacity to produce photos of Caucasian people."We introduced the ability to produce photographs of people three weeks ago as part of a new image production function for the Gemini conversational app, formerly known as Bard. Clearly, this functionality fell short of expectations. A few of the pictures that are produced are untrue or even offensive. We apologize that the tool didn't function properly and appreciate the input from users, Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan stated in a blog post.Recently, there has been a lot of indignation and ridicule on social media due to photographs created by Geminis. Google was even accused by some users of being "woke" at the expense of accuracy or truth. Images showing Black and Asian Nazi troopers as well as a picture of four Swedish women—none of whom were white—were among those that drew criticism.

Additionally, some users have reported that the program, no matter what they enter, would not produce any photographs of white people at all.The founder engineer of corporate search firm Glean, Debarghya Das, wrote on X, "It's embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist." The post included several photos produced by Gemini.Not only did Gemini commit a racial faux pas, but it also failed to consider cultural context. For example, a different X user said that when they looked for a picture of a "Bitcoiner eating a steak," they ended up with a picture of a Hindu woman consuming beef. "I assume Google is attempting to show cultural sensitivity with this? He went on, "Btw, Hindus can definitely be Bitcoiners, but they probably wouldn't be eating a steak because cows are revered."On Thursday, Google, a division of Alphabet (GOOGL), temporarily disabled a few image-generating functionalities of its Gemini suite of artificial intelligence (AI) services. The suspension follows user disclosure this week of several historically incorrect photos produced by the service.Four days priorGoogle has made the decision to temporarily halt the creation of person images using its Gemini image generator. The decision was made in reaction to complaints that the program inaccurately depicted people's races in historical settings, which sparked discussion about how technology shapes people's perceptions of diversity and history.Billionaire Elon Musk brought attention to the topic by calling the AI tool "woke" and "racist." The complexity of striking a balance between historical truth and inclusion proved to be too much for the technology to handle.