Google apologises after new Photos app auto-tagged black people as 'gorillas'

New Delhi: When launched, Google’s Photos app boasted of new features which included auto-tagging and sorting of pictures based on categories like people, food, landscapes, etc.

However, the automatic feature took a distasteful turn when an African-American man, Jacky Alciné, looked at his album only to find himself and his black female friend being auto-labeled as ‘gorillas.’

Alciné who is a computer programmer took to Twitter and posted the screenshots of the major goof up on Google’s part with a question, “What kind of sample image data you collected that would result in this son?," Ars Technica reports.

In less than two hours, Google’s Chief Social Architect Yonaton Zunger sent the affected user an official response that read, "Holy fuck. G+ CA here. No, this is not how you determine someone's target market. This is 100 per cent not okay."

Zunger then asked for access to Alciné's account and on Tuesday, he confirmed that the ‘gorilla’ label had been removed from the app’s database.

He confirmed that a lot still needed to be done in terms of facial recognition. He even admitted that the app once had a major bug where people of all races were automatically tagged as dogs.

Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson also apologized for the bug and said that the automatic image labeling still needed more work.