Google slipped big time this time around

Jul 2, 2015 11:32 GMT  ·  By

During its 2015 I/O conference, Google announced with bells and whistles the advent of the revamped Photos app for Android, iOS and the web. On top of that, the search giant also said that it would offer unlimited storage for images and videos completely for free, for those willing to jump on board the service.

One of the features Google prides itself in offering with the Photos app is auto-tagging, a function that is apparently capable of recognizing subjects in a photo and tagging them accordingly. But as is the case with most new features, this one also comes with a host of glitches. One of them being really embarrassing.

Twitter user Jacky Alciné has recently called Google’s attention to a nasty bug in Google Photos that auto-tagged his dark-skinned girlfriend with the insulting “gorilla” tag.

Chief Social Architect at Google, Yonathan Zunger quickly took notice of the report and apologized to Alciné for the mistake, then proceeded to forward the bug to the Google Photos team.

Facial recognition in the Photos App is pretty flawed

In his following tweets, Zunger does a lot of mea culpa, stating that the facial-recognition technology inside Google Photos needs a lot of fine-tuning before it can function as it is intended. Zunger swears that the Google Photos team will be on the lookout for potentially offensive tags in the future.

The Google employee has also revealed that some users have been reporting that blurred photos are showing up in their search results, but a patch to resolve this particular issue will be with us soon.

Last but not least, Google’s Chief Social Architect has confirmed that the “gorilla” tag has been removed from the app’s database. Hopefully, you don’t have any pictures in your database depicting real-life monkeys.

Still, this is just a temporary solution until Google’s software is “taught” how to properly recognize the human face. We hope that the Photos app team figures it out soon, because this slip was surely very embarrassing.

Luckily, Google has been quick in handling things related to this matter. But the occurrence also proves that you shouldn’t rush to launch something into the wild unless you’re 100% sure it’s ready for prime-time.