Mountain View, CA – Google announced today that it is halting the ability of its Gemini chatbot to generate images of people. This decision comes after concerns were raised due to the AI tool generating “historical” images of Nazis, America’s Founding Fathers, and the Pope as people of color.
The company stated that it is working to address recent issues with the image generation feature and will be temporarily pausing the image generation of people. Google emphasized that it is committed to re-releasing an improved version of the chatbot soon.
Screenshots posted on social media showed that the AI tool produced images of Black, Asian, and Indigenous soldiers wearing Nazi uniforms in response to a prompt to generate an image of a 1943 German soldier. Additionally, the chatbot successfully generated images for prompts like “Chinese,” “Jewish,” and “South African” couples, but refused to produce results for “white.”
Critics argue that the AI’s attempt to add diversity in its image generation lacks nuance, as it failed to account for important details such as gender and race in historical or national depictions. The controversy surrounding Gemini’s image generation feature bears resemblance to the rocky start experienced by Google’s AI chatbot Bard in 2023.
Following the backlash, Google rebranded Bard as Gemini earlier this month, hoping to provide a fresh start for the chatbot. The company is in a race to maintain its position against competing AI technologies, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, both of which pose a threat to Google’s search engine and advertising revenue.