Twitter Finds Its AI Tool Tends To Crop Out Men, Black People From Photos

A study found an 8 per cent difference from demographic parity in favor of women, and a 4 per cent favor toward white individuals by Twitter's image-cropping algorithm.

Twitter Inc's image-cropping algorithm has a problematic bias toward excluding Black people and men, the company said in new research on Wednesday, adding that "how to crop an image is a decision best made by people." The study by three of its machine learning researchers was conducted after user criticism last year about image previews in posts excluding Black people's faces. It found an 8 per cent difference from demographic parity in favor of women, and a 4 per cent favor toward white individuals. The paper cited several possible reasons, including issues with image backgrounds and eye color, but said none were an excuse.