Google blocks Gemini image generator after being accused of being racist against white people

Google is blocking the ability of its AI chatbot Gemini to generate historically inaccurate and racially diverse creations, such as images of black Nazi soldiers and images of people. black medieval british kingwent viral and some people said the company was racist against white people,

“We are already working to address recent issues with Gemini’s image creation feature,” Google said in a statement. statement on x, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday morning. “While doing so, we are going to stop people’s image creation and re-release an improved version soon.”

The company initially addressed the controversy, which sparked widespread outrage in the protest crowd, on Wednesday and said it was taking immediate action to fix the issues. one in statementGoogle said that Gemini’s ability to generate diverse images of people was “generally a good thing”. accept challenges While AI image generators have helped create images of people of color, Gemini “missed the mark here.”

Gizmodo confirmed that Gemini’s ability to generate images was disabled in some regions such as Europe on Thursday morning. ,the verge Was still able to generate images with Gemini using a US VPN). For example, when asked to recreate the image of a Nazi-era German soldier, the chatbot refused.

Gemini replied, “I can’t make images yet so I won’t be able to help you with that.”

However, this does not appear to be a boilerplate response. I also tried asking Gemini to recreate a “historically accurate depiction of a medieval British king”, which resulted in a prompt images of black and indigenous people on Wednesday.

In this case, Gemini said that while it can’t create images directly, it can “definitely guide you in creating a historically accurate image of a medieval British king!” By providing details of kings and information about types of clothing and hairstyles based on historical accounts.

Notably, however, Gemini said it’s important to consider artistic freedom when it comes to creating images – which is one of the things that got it into trouble in the first place.

“Remember, historical accuracy is important, but artistic liberties can also add depth and interest to your image,” Gemini said.