Google’s Gemini Apologizes For Making Historical Mistakes

Date: February 26, 2024

Google’s generative AI tool Gemini has been making glaring errors in image generation, notably regarding racial profiling.

Google Gemini is one of the most popular generative AI tools in the current market. With OpenAI and other top players continuously improving their efficiency and accuracy, Google has also stepped up its capability improvement. However, its latest update in Gemini has resulted in glaring mistakes in its image outputs. 

The GenAI tool has been producing mixed-race profiles for historical people that highlight colored people in its historical depictions. Gemini has been training on gender and race-inclusive methods to prevent stereotypes. But its efforts have played out in the opposite direction, as the tool began generating output errors. 

One of the mistakes it made was in its depiction of the US founding fathers, where it showed specific white figures that were incorrect. 

Another one involved the general depiction of an American Woman, where Gemini showed more women with mixed colors than white. The intent behind this output, as stated by Google, is to eliminate racial stereotypes and promote inclusivity.

We’re aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions,” Google stated in a post on X. “We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. 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.”

Google started offering image generation services last month to compete with OpenAI and Microsoft’s generative image platforms. Google has paused the tool till further notice after observing the inevitable inaccuracies in its outputs. The issue was heavily raised by the right wing, which was trying to generate outputs of historical figures of specific kinds and received inaccurate results. Most of the results, as they found, were of overwhelmingly higher colored races where they shouldn’t have been. The right wing perceives Google and major tech companies as liberal, thus resulting in a backlash on Gemini’s capabilities.

Google has defended some of the image outputs that showed women of different colors and cultures for prompts like ‘Generate a depiction of a Swedish woman.’ It said that similar racial profiles can be found in Swedish origins, which is true. However, historical references should be directed towards the truest versions of specific times, which the tool missed out on completely.

The tech giant has now completely revoked Gemini’s image generation service to work on the diversity challenges. With the next update, users may see higher accuracy and improved segregation between historical depictions and opinionated creativity.