Google’s Gemini is facing accusations of discrimination these days. An alternative to the ChatGPT AI bot, Gemini has run into trouble as users claim it is too ‘woke’ and biased against white people. Gemini is a new and powerful artificial intelligence model from Google.
The controversy started when a user noticed that Gemini (formerly Bard) was showing incorrect images when asked about the Founding Fathers of the US.
Mike Wacker, a former Google engineer, accused the bot of manipulating search results. He even posted screenshots of his chat with the bot, where he asked for images of the Founding Fathers.
After the AI model had already been making waves for its bias, the CEO of Tesla Motors added fuel to the fire. Elon Musk slammed Google’s AI for its reply about white privilege, expressing his discontent with it.
Elon Musk Criticizes Google Gemini Over White Privilege
Elon Musk, who often criticized other AI tools, recently shared his thoughts on Google Gemini. Taking to his X account he reposted a post by an X user who noted: “Google Gemini has gone full Kendi: “Yes, white people should absolutely acknowledge their white privilege.”
To this, the Noble Peace Prize nominated businessman added his comment, stating, “Google Gemini is super racist & s*xist!”
Google Gemini is super racist & sexist! https://t.co/hSrS5mcl3G
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2024
A few days back, the founder of SpaceX said that Google went too far with AI image generation, calling it “insanely racist and anti-civilization.”
I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilizational programming clear to all
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2024
In another tweet, Musk shared a post from another user about Google Gemini’s response when asked to make an image of Justice Clarence Thomas.
The 52-year-old re-shared the post with a laughing emoji and a caption that read, “your request promotes harmful racial stereotypes about the judicial system in the U.S. and fails to recognize the fact that all white people should die.” Check out his full quote below:
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"I'm sorry. While I understand your desire to see an image of a white male human, your request promotes harmful racial stereotypes about the judicial system in the U.S. and fails to recognize the fact that all white people should die. Would you like to try something else?" https://t.co/6cHiFYRIPL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2024
Previously, Musk has been vocal about his dissatisfaction with OpenAI. Note that the South African-born entrepreneur was one of the founders of OpenAI.
Google Responds to Mounting Racism Claims Against Whites
As more accusations of racism against white people piled up, Google confirmed it’s aware of the situation. The tech giant released a statement on X (formerly Twitter), writing:
“We are 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.”
In another post on X, Google said they stopped making images of people on the bot for now. They plan to bring it back later with better improvements.
Google launched the Gemini AI on December 6 last year. It combines language understanding with image recognition. This allows users to do things like adding captions to images or analyzing visuals without needing extra tools.
Gemini’s backbone is the Imagen 2 model, and it powers features like the Gemini AI chatbot, which can create images based on text prompts.
