GoogleChief Executive Officer Sundar PichaiAbout GoogleGemini The Gemini app, billed by the company as a revolutionary new search tool, was criticized when some users asked for images of historical figures, such as World War II-era German soldiers and the Pope, who had previously been a white male. The Pope.Some of Gemini's images depict Nazi soldiers as black and Asian, and the Pope as female.
Faced with user dissatisfaction and bias in responses to AI tools, Google has temporarily halted use of the Gemini image generator.In an email to employees on Tuesday, Pichai wrote: "I want to address the issues that have arisen in the Gemini app, particularly as it relates to problematic text and image responses. I know that some of these responses have offended our users and demonstrated bias - to be clear, this is completely unacceptable and we got it wrong."
The Gemini image generator problem is a setback for Google’s push into artificial intelligence as the company tries to keep pace with rivals such as Microsoft. Last month, Google rebranded Bard, a chatbot it launched last year, as Gemini, describing the revamped product as itsStrongestLarge AI model.
Tech companies such as Google claim they conduct extensive security and ethical testing of their models, but Axios tech policy reporter Maria Curi said, "We don't know exactly what the testing process is. Users have found historic inaccuracies, which raises the question of whether these models were pushed out into the world too soon."
In Pichai's memo, he said Google employees have been "working around the clock to address these issues. We've seen significant improvements across a variety of prompts." He added: "No AI is perfect, especially early in the industry's development, but we know the demands are high and we will keep working on it, no matter how long it takes. We will review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale."
AI-powered chatbots are also raising concerns about the role they could play in the upcoming U.S. election. A study released Tuesday found that Gemini and four other widely used AI tools produced inaccurate election information more than half the time, and even directed voters to non-existent polling locations. Experts worry that powerful new AI could lead voters to receive false and misleading information, and could even prevent people from going to the polls.