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Bizarre racism: Google Images search shows up 'three black teens' as police mugshots

A simple search for an image term three black teens' shows up bizarre images on Google Images.

A severe contrast in searched images pronounces Google’s search algorithm as a racist. In a bizarre incident, a Virginia resident Kabir Alli happened to search for some images on Google. He entered the term ‘three black teens’ on Google and was shocked when the search engine displayed police mugshots instead of plain photos. On the other hand, he was stunned when he searched for ‘three white teens’ and got to see normal images that he would have wanted earlier.

As reported by The Guardian, Alli posted a video clip on Twitter where he is himself carrying out a straightforward search of ‘three black teenagers’, which overwhelmingly turns up prisoners’ mugshots.

Further he said ‘now let’s change the colour and changes it to ‘white’and to his surprice, it shows stick photos of smiling, wholesome young people, highlighting the pervasiveness of racial bias and media profiling.

Alli’s tweet has presently been retweeted more than 62,000 times and liked by almost 55,500 people ever since it was posted earlier this week.

Alli told The Guardian that he had heard about the discrepancy in the search results from his friends and ‘When I saw the results for myself I was shocked.’ Some users responded to his tweet calling Google racist.

Google’s search results are created through various algorithms. Though Google is not a racist, they should look into the matter and have the same corrected and place additional control over similar topics.

The Guardian also highlights an earlier incident where a student searched for unprofessional hairstyles for work’ and ‘professional hairstyles for work’ and received similar results.

In a similar case last year, Google had also showed up two black people tagged as ‘Gorillas’in its new photo app, and apologised for it later.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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