As Google (GOOG, GOOGL) suffered a second time, the market buzz around generative AI comes with intense scrutiny.
The search giant this week reinstated its Gemini AI image generator after some users on social media showed how prompts for historical images of people were producing inaccurate or unexpected results. announced plans to launch it. This is what critics call “anti-white bias.”
One viral post seemed to show Gemini results for a “portrait of America’s founding fathers” that included a black man and a Native American man. Other examples of image and text results have sparked disapproval from celebrities including X owner Elon Musk, who has previously criticized the AI tool’s perceived liberal bias.
The incident marks the latest misstep for Google, which is struggling to secure its place in the growing market for AI products and trying to catch up with Microsoft (MSFT) and its AI partner OpenAI. Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet fell nearly 5% this week following the announcement of the tool’s suspension.
“We know that some of our responses have been upsetting to our users and are indicative of bias. We want to be clear: “This is completely unacceptable and our decision was wrong.”
Rob Sanderson, managing director at Loop Capital, said the public relations blunder suggests Google is lagging behind and underperforming in the high-stakes field of generative AI. He said questions surrounding Google’s standing and search dominance would weigh on Google’s valuation.
“Google seems to be handling product introductions differently than Google has traditionally done,” he said. “We think Google is in the unfamiliar position of not being a leader in its core areas. [machine learning]-Driven technology. Google has been trying hard to catch up and now has to backtrack to repair core technology components while dealing with a major PR failure, perhaps even more. ”
Google’s first AI fumble happened a year ago, when the company released a demo of its AI chatbot, Bard, a few months after ChatGPT exploded onto the scene. Google’s chatbot spat out inaccurate responses in a promotional video that circulated widely online. Shortly after, just as Microsoft’s fortunes rose, unwary investors wiped $100 billion from Google’s market value.
Google explained in a recent blog post that it has adjusted its Gemini image generation tool to show different people with different ethnicities and other characteristics, but it doesn’t account for cases where diversity shouldn’t be represented. did.
Some observers have suggested that the company’s long-standing dominance in search may have fostered a culture of oppression among its employees, which ultimately manifested itself in its tools. .
“Many have suggested that cultural biases about social issues are deeply entwined in Google’s engineering and are reflected in its cutting-edge AI products,” Sanderson said.
Alison Taylor, a professor at New York University whose research focuses on business ethics and social impact, said the obvious overcorrection of introducing diversity initiatives into technology is that companies such as Google are He said it also highlights a troubling position.
“Are these AI tools reflecting the accurate fact that society is racist, or are they trying to correct it and the result is the absurdity we see?” she said. said.
Similar to previous episodes with Bud Light (BUD) and Target (T), Google has drawn the ire of some conservatives who see American companies’ attempts at inclusivity as hostile and hamstrung. ing.
Last year, conservative protests aimed at Target and Bud Light’s support for the LGBTQ community hurt the brands’ finances. Experts said the companies created a semblance of backtracking that fueled intense negative publicity and invited criticism from customers who objected to the company’s actions and the customers the brands were originally trying to appeal to.
Both companies served, at least for a time, as a wake-up call in the marketing world about their seeming lack of understanding of their audiences and their clumsy response to political boycotts. But Wall Street has made great strides. Both stocks recovered from earlier losses.
However, the market may not be as forgiving towards Google.
For those opposed to diversity efforts, the incident looks like inclusivity gone wild. For AI critics, this article highlights the mad dash to deliver products and clumsy attempts to fix bias in AI models. And for Wall Street, this highlights another danger from Google attacking from behind.
“We believe Google’s position is uncertain. [generative] “AI and its long-term implications will at least create a ‘wall of fear’ for investors, and at worst the beginning of a long-term decline,” Sanderson said.
Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance, covering markets and economics. Follow Hamza on Twitter @hshaban.
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