Gemini’s failure to generate images of white people sparked outrage, though AI image generators are historically terrible at producing people of color.
Google’s AI chatbot Gemini has a unique problem. It has a hard time producing pictures of white people, often turning Vikings, founding fathers, and Canadian hockey players into people of color. This sparked outrage from the anti-woke community, claiming racism against white people. Today, Google acknowledged Gemini’s error.
“We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately,” said Google Communications in a statement. “Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.”
Users pointed out that Gemini would, at times, refuse requests when specifically asked to create images of white people. However, when requests were made for images of Black people, Gemini had no issues. This resulted in an outrage from the anti-woke community on social media platforms, such as X, calling for immediate action.
Google’s acknowledgment of the error is, to put it lightly, surprising, given that AI image generators have done a terrible job at depicting people of color. An investigation from The found that the AI image generator, Stable Diffusion, almost always identified food stamp recipients as Black, even though 63% of recipients are white.
