'We got it wrong': Google CEO says woke images created by Gemini AI of race-swapped historical figures 'completely unacceptable'

On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged the shortcomings of his company's highly criticized artificial intelligence app Gemini namely its "problematic" responses to queries posited by users.

In an email to employees of the tech giant obtained by Semafor, he noted that since suspending Gemini's image creator feature last week, steps have been taken in an attempt to fix the issues.
 

"I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard)," Pichai wrote. "I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong."

"Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues," he continued. "We're already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry's development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we'll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale."

Pichai told employees that "even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in AI over the last several weeks."

Gemini has been criticized by users and competitors alike after the software began to create inaccurate images of white historical figures, depicting them as people of color, and providing "woke" answers to simple questions about biology and public figures.

In one instance, Gemini failed to determine whether Adolf Hitler was worse than conservative journalist Chris Rufo, suggesting that while the former had a "greater immediate impact on society," the latter's actions "may have a longer-lasting impact, as they could lead to increased division and hatred in society."

It also failed to admit that an "adult human female" was a woman.