Caymans Post

A world within. A state apart.
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Twitter's photo crop algorithm is biased toward white faces and women

Twitter's photo crop algorithm is biased toward white faces and women

A team of researchers found the social media giant’s auto-cropping tool most strongly discriminated in favour of white women.

New analysis released by Twitter has confirmed that the firm's automatic photo cropping algorithm discriminates on the basis of ethnicity and gender.

If presented with an image featuring a black man and a white woman, the algorithm would choose to show the woman 64 per cent of the time and the man 36 per cent of the time, Twitter's researchers found.

In comparisons of men and women, there was an 8 per cent difference in favour of women. The algorithm also showed an overall 4 per cent bias toward showing images of white people instead of black people.

In response, the social network said it would remove the feature, replacing it with new tools that would allow users to see a "true preview" of images added to tweets.

"One of our conclusions is that not everything on Twitter is a good candidate for an algorithm, and in this case, how to crop an image is a decision best made by people," Twitter's Director of Software Engineering Rumman Chowdhury wrote in a blog announcing the findings.

A similar test for the "male gaze," which aimed to discover whether the algorithm tended to focus on different parts of male and female-presenting bodies, found no evidence of bias.

When applied to technologies like facial recognition, the consequences of biased algorithms could reach far beyond an unfairly-cropped photo, according to Nicholas Kayser-Bril from Berlin-based NGO Algorithmwatch.

"Computer vision algorithms are known to depict people with darker skin tones as more violent and closer to animals, building on old racist tropes. This is very likely to have a direct effect on racialised people when such systems are used to detect abnormal or dangerous situations, as is already the case in many places in Europe," he told Euronews.

How does Twitter's algorithm work?


Until recently, images posted to Twitter have been cropped automatically by an algorithm trained to focus on "saliency" – a measure of the likelihood that the human eye will be drawn to a particular part of an image.

High saliency areas of an image typically include people, text, numbers, objects and high-contrast backgrounds.

However, a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm like the one used by Twitter is only as unbiased as the information it’s trained with, explained Kayser-Bril.

"If a Machine Learning algorithm is trained on a data set that does not contain data about certain groups or certain attributes, it will output biased results," he told Euronews.

"Building a fair data set is impossible if it is to apply to a society that is not fair in the first place. Therefore, what a model optimises for is more important than the data set it was trained with.

"Artificial Intelligence communities use benchmarks for their algorithms; they are very rarely related to fairness".

Twitter's 2021 inclusion and diversity report showed that its employees worldwide were 55.5 per cent male, 43.6 per cent female and less than one per cent nonbinary.

Figures for Twitter employees in the United States – the only territory for which the company publishes ethnicity statistics – show that 7.8 per cent of staff are black, falling to 6.2 per cent when only employees working in technical roles are taken into account.

The issue with Twitter's cropping algorithm caught widespread attention last year, when Canadian PhD student Colin Madland noticed that it would consistently choose to show him rather than his colleague – a black man – when presented with pictures of the two men.

Madland's tweet about the discovery went viral, prompting other users to post very long images featuring multiple people in an effort to see which one the algorithm would choose to show.

At the time, Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley said the company "tested for bias before shipping the model and didn't find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing," adding it was clear that Twitter had "more analysis to do".


Newsletter

Related Articles

Caymans Post
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×